Bøger af Jon Clinch

"The camp at Auschwitz took one year of my life, and of my own free will I gave it another four." So begins the much-anticipated new novel from Jon Clinch, award-winning author of Finn and Kings of the Earth. In The Thief of Auschwitz, Clinch steps for the first time beyond the deeply American roots of his earlier books to explore one of the darkest moments in mankind's history-and to do so with the sympathy, vision, and heart that are the hallmarks of his work. Told in two intertwining narratives, The Thief of Auschwitz takes readers on a dual journey: one into the death camp at Auschwitz with Jacob, Eidel, Max, and Lydia Rosen; the other into the heart of Max himself, now an aged but extremely vital-and outspoken-survivor. Old Max has become a world-reknowned painter, and he's about to be honored with a retrospective at the National Gallery in Washington. Yet the truth is that he's been keeping a crucial secret from the art world-indeed from the world at large, and perhaps even from himself-all his life long. The Thief of Auschwitz reveals that secret, along with others that lie in the heart of a family that's called upon to endure-together and separately-the unendurable.

This is the 10th-Anniversary Edition of Finn, with a new introduction by Jared Leto. In this masterful debut, Jon Clinch takes us on a journey into the history and heart of one of American literature's most brutal and mysterious figures: Huckleberry Finn's father. The result is a deeply original tour de force that springs from Twain's classic novel but takes on a fully realized life of its own. Finn sets a tragic figure loose in a landscape at once familiar and mythic. It begins and ends with a lifeless body-flayed and stripped of all identifying marks-drifting down the Mississippi. The circumstances of the murder, and the secret of the victim's identity, shape Finn's story as they will shape his life and his death. Along the way Clinch introduces a cast of unforgettable characters: Finn's terrifying father, known only as the Judge; his sickly, sycophantic brother, Will; blind Bliss, a secretive moonshiner; the strong and quick-witted Mary, a stolen slave who becomes Finn's mistress; and of course young Huck himself. In daring to re-create Huck for a new generation, Clinch gives us a living boy in all his human complexity-not an icon, not a myth, but a real child facing vast possibilities in a world alternately dangerous and bright. Finn is a novel about race; about paternity in its many guises; about the shame of a nation recapitulated by the shame of one absolutely unforgettable family. Above all, Finn reaches back into the darkest waters of America's past to fashion something compelling, fearless, and new. Praise for Finn "A brutal, shocking and epic look in the mirror for all Americans." - Jared Leto, from the introduction "Ravishing...and a stand-alone marvel of a novel. Grade: A." - Entertainment Weekly "Clinch treads dangerous ground in making one of America's greatest novels his jumping-off point, but he brings it off magnificently." - Dallas Morning News "Clinch's riverbank Missouri feels postapocalyptic, and his Pap Finn is a crazed yet wily survivor in a polluted landscape." - Newsweek "Finn strikes its most original chords in its bold imagining of possibilities left unexplored by Huckleberry Finn." - Austin American-Statesman "An inspired riff on one of literature's all-time great villains." - New Orleans Times-Picayune "A jolting companion to the mischievous antics of Huckleberry Finn." - Christian Science Monitor "A triumph of successful plotting, convincing characterization and lyrical prose." - Rocky Mountain News "Shocking and charming, A folk-art masterpiece." - New York Post "Disturbing and darkly compelling." - Hartford Courant "Jon Clinch pulls off the near impossible in his new novel, which brings Huck's dad to life in all his terrible humanness." - Winston-Salem Journal "Every fan of Twain's masterpiece will want to read this inspired spin-off, which could become an unofficial companion volume." - Library Journal, starred review "Finn is as dark, as brutal, as ambivalent, and as insane as the history and legacy of American racial slavery." - Mary Gaitskill, author of Veronica "Clinch's tale is not only filled with echoes of the great American classic to which it is tied; it is destined to become one itself." - Sara Gruen, author of Water for Elephants

Following up Finn-his much-heralded and prize-winning debut whose voice evoked "the mythic styles of his literary predecessors...William Faulkner, Toni Morrison, Cormac McCarthy and Edward P. Jones" (San Francisco Chronicle)-Jon Clinch returns with Kings of the Earth, a powerful and haunting story of life, death, and family in rural America. The edge of civilization is closer than we think. It's as close as a primitive farm on the margins of an upstate New York town, where the three Proctor brothers live together in a kind of crumbling stasis. They linger like creatures from an older, wilder, and far less forgiving world-until one of them dies in his sleep, and the other two are suspected of murder. Told in a chorus of voices that span generations, Kings of the Earth examines the bonds of family and blood, faith and suspicion that link not just the brothers but their entire community. Vernon, the oldest brother, is reduced by work and illness to a shambling shadow of himself. Feebleminded Audie lingers by his side, needy and unknowable. And Creed, the youngest of the three and the only one to have seen anything of the world (courtesy of the U.S. Army), struggles with impulses and accusations beyond his understanding. We meet Del Graham, a state trooper torn between his urge to understand the brothers and his desire for justice; Preston Hatch, a neighbor who's spent his life protecting the three men from themselves; and a host of other living, breathing characters whose voices emerge to shape this sprawling but deeply intimate saga of life, death, and the human condition at its limits.

Part adventure, part romance, and part tall tale-BELZONI DREAMS OF EGYPT is the "fictional autobiography" of Giovanni Battista Belzoni, a real-life 19th-century explorer, circus performer, and shameless self-promoter. He narrates the story at the end of his life, aboard a ship bound for the coast of Africa and his final, fatal adventure. Belzoni's voice is bombastic and beautiful, and his narrative is both an unabashed love story and a ripping yarn. Plus, it's mostly lies. The real-life Belzoni pillaged Egypt while Lord Elgin was pillaging Greece-only a whole lot more colorfully. Born in Padua, raised in Rome, and educated by the Capuchins, he stood nearly seven feet tall and easily found work in England as a circus strongman. His strength and agility, along with his expertise in hydraulics and pyrotechnics, brought him to the attention of of Mohammed 'Ali, the Pasha of Egypt, and from there it was short work to begin ransacking the Valley of the Kings. BELZONI DREAMS OF EGYPT brings Belzoni back to vivid life, yarning about his exploits in a series of cliff-hangers involving pyramids and catacombs, poison gas and carnival freaks, heartless popes and Napoleon's army. To say nothing of his loyal companion, the Irish orphan James Curtin, and his one true love, the faithful Sarah Banne Belzoni.

"Ulysses S. Grant reflects on the crucial moments of his life as a husband, a father, a general, and a president while writing his memoirs and reckoning with his complicated legacy"--

From the acclaimed author of Finn comes a masterful re-imagining of Charles Dickens's classic, A Christmas Carol, in this darkly entertaining and moving exploration of the twisted relationship between Ebenezer Scrooge and Jacob Marley.

Must-read modern literature on Dickens's classic A Christmas Carol that explores of the relationship between Ebenezer Scrooge and Jacob Marley.