Far too many are unfamiliar with the work of Andrea Lee, save perhaps those regular perusers of The New Yorker or those who`ve chanced upon her brilliant first novel, Sarah Phillips, in an African American or Women`s Literature class. First published in 1984, Sarah Phillips is a rare look at the wealthy Black bourgeoisie of the United States. It is the story of the title character`s trip abroad to Europe and her struggles with identity and desire.

Interesting Women, Lee`s first published book in nearly two decades, is a collection of thirteen short stories centered on the lives of, well, interesting women. In just 222 pages, we become privy to women of intelligence, sophistication, confidence and means. No one, thank god, is obsessing over her weight or falling to pieces because she can`t find a man. Instead, the women Lee has created share the universal experience of intimate outsider. Intimate in the ways that marriage, friendship and socioeconomic class allow. Outsiders because they are often, but not always, expatriates, women of color or otherwise estranged.

"The Birthday Present" is a delicious tale about an American wife who purchases the services of two high class call girls for her Italian husband`s fifty-fifth birthday. "Dancing with Josephina" tells the story of a beautiful young black woman who is propositioned by a white male tourist who mistakes her for a native woman when in fact she is on holiday in Honduras with her white husband. "Anthology" is the largely autobiographical account of a writer who offends a contingent of her family in an article examining her roots by referring to them as Black when they themselves identify as mixed race or colored. "Un Petit d`un Petit" chronicles the consistent on again off again relationship of two women over the course of a lifetime.

Though born in Philadelphia, like James Baldwin, Lee has chosen the life of an expatriate. And like Baldwin, she does not write only about Black characters. In a recent interview Lee allows that she has avoided being classified as a black writer. In response to the fact that race is only mentioned once in her memoir, Russian Journal, which was nominated for a National Book Award in 1981, she said, "When I wrote a book about Russia, I didn`t want to be the Black Person in Russia." Her choice challenges the severely limited representations of who and what Black is and can be. This does not mean she shies away from race, gender and class politics or that she creates Black characters that are merely melanin injected or chocolate coated. Instead, she writes race as a matter of fact but not always of focus.

Her writing is made rich with subtlety, nuance, and astute observation. It is near impossible to discern what is firsthand knowledge and what can be accredited to keen journalistic study. After all, Lee, the daughter of a minister (also like Baldwin), is married to an Italian baron, matriculated abroad in Switzerland as a child and earned her bachelor`s and master`s degrees from Harvard University. Lee`s work is reminiscent of that of Harlem Renaissance writer Nella Larson and the protagonists she created in her novels Quicksand and Passing. Larson`s mother was Danish and her father African American. Like Lee, she spent a short while studying abroad in Europe. And like Lee, Larson wrote of intimate outsiders, the Black elite, race, gender, class and perception all in a stylish confident prose.

So while it would seem that the most interesting woman of all is Andrea Lee herself, until she pens an autobiography, one is well advised to indulge in the lush and knowing stories that make up Interesting Women.

Zakia is the founder and editor-in-chief of coloredgirls.com. She is addicted to books and likes to write.