Just Before the War With the Eskimos Add a review

"Just Before the War with the Eskimos" is a short story by J. D. Salinger originally published in the June 5, 1948, issue of The New Yorker. It was anthologized in Salinger's 1953 collection Nine Stories, and reprinted for Bantam in Manhattan: Stories from the Heart of a Great City in 1954. It is a tale of adolescent alienation and redemption in a post-World War II setting. It focuses primarily on 15-year-old Ginnie Mannox's meeting with her classmate Selena Graff's older brother, Franklin.

Poet and New Yorker editor Dorothy Parker called the story "urbane, clever, and absolutely well-written". At the time of its publication, it confused but delighted its audience.