Rewriting the Nostalgic Story

Rewriting the Nostalgic Story

Author: Teresa M. Brown

Publisher:

Published: 1989

Total Pages: 182

ISBN-13:

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This dissertation interrogates the nostalgic story, which has been a favorite in the Western literary tradition since Homer's paradigmatic tale of nostalgia, the Odyssey. Interpreting nostalgia etymologically to mean the longing to return home, this dissertation suggests that the traditional story of nostalgia may be alienating to woman who has historically remained, physically as well as psychically, in the home, and it argues that certain contemporary women writers are critiquing and rewriting the nostalgic story. Chapter One, "The Subject of Desire in Feminist Theory," situates this dissertation within the context of current issues in feminist theory, namely, the problem of defining woman. Chapter Two, "There's No place like Home: Toward a Psychoanalytic Theory of Nostalgia," traces the pattern of Oedipal desire in popular narratives of nostalgia, The Wizard of Oz, and Terry Gilliam's Brazil, in order to show how alienating such narratives may be to a woman. Chapter Three, "Nostalgia and Marilynne Robinson's Discontent," discusses Marilynne Robinson's revision of the nostalgic story in her novel Housekeeping, and Chapter Four, "Longing to Long: Kathy Acker and the Politics of Pain," discusses Kathy Acker's representation of the pain that is caused by woman's alienation from the traditional nostalgic story.


Book Synopsis Rewriting the Nostalgic Story by : Teresa M. Brown

Download or read book Rewriting the Nostalgic Story written by Teresa M. Brown and published by . This book was released on 1989 with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation interrogates the nostalgic story, which has been a favorite in the Western literary tradition since Homer's paradigmatic tale of nostalgia, the Odyssey. Interpreting nostalgia etymologically to mean the longing to return home, this dissertation suggests that the traditional story of nostalgia may be alienating to woman who has historically remained, physically as well as psychically, in the home, and it argues that certain contemporary women writers are critiquing and rewriting the nostalgic story. Chapter One, "The Subject of Desire in Feminist Theory," situates this dissertation within the context of current issues in feminist theory, namely, the problem of defining woman. Chapter Two, "There's No place like Home: Toward a Psychoanalytic Theory of Nostalgia," traces the pattern of Oedipal desire in popular narratives of nostalgia, The Wizard of Oz, and Terry Gilliam's Brazil, in order to show how alienating such narratives may be to a woman. Chapter Three, "Nostalgia and Marilynne Robinson's Discontent," discusses Marilynne Robinson's revision of the nostalgic story in her novel Housekeeping, and Chapter Four, "Longing to Long: Kathy Acker and the Politics of Pain," discusses Kathy Acker's representation of the pain that is caused by woman's alienation from the traditional nostalgic story.

Nostalgia or Perversion? Gothic Rewriting from the Eighteenth Century until the Present Day

Nostalgia or Perversion? Gothic Rewriting from the Eighteenth Century until the Present Day

Author: Isabella van Elferen

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2009-03-26

Total Pages: 270

ISBN-13: 1443807451

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Nostalgia or Perversion? Gothic Rewriting from the Eighteenth Century until the Present Day presents an interdisciplinary approach to an important aspect of Gothic texts, films, and music: that of rewriting. From the eighteenth-century Gothic novel to present-day vampire films and Goth music, the genre is characterised by its nostalgic reflection on past worlds, narratives, and identities. Gothic nostalgia is often accompanied by a transgressive drive, resulting in perversions of the rewritten past—the modern vampire is no longer embodied evil but an attractive dandy, while Goth subcultures reflect on Victorian aesthetics but pervert them by adding fetishist elements. Gothic nostalgia transforms the past, turning it upside down, foregrounding its background, and corrupting its order. In this volume an international group of philosophy, literature, film, and music scholars investigates the instrumental role of nostalgia and perversion in the Gothic’s rewriting of the past. If elements of both nostalgia and perversion are operative in Gothic rewriting, how are they connected? How do they play out in differing media? How do they change audiences’ views on the relationships between binaries such as past and present, other and self, and norm and deviation? Nostalgia or Perversion brings together the early Gothic novel, present-day female and black Gothic literature, Goth subculture and music, and the imagery of horror films and comic books, thus broadening the definition of ‘Gothic’ from a literary genre to a gesture of pervasive cultural criticism. The interdisciplinary analysis of nostalgia and perversion in Gothic rewriting uncovers wholly new insights into the artistic and social functions of the Gothic, making the volume useful to both scholars and students. As the essays reflect on academic as well as popular texts and media, it is also accessible to general readers. "Nostalgia or Perversion provides a sophisticated analysis of how the Gothic radically rewrites the past, not as nostalgia but as a calculated act of transgression. The past and how its reconstructions break down the boundaries between real and unreal, and normal and abnormal, is examined across a range of different media, including novels, films, comic books, television and music. The essays in this collection also address how this issue shapes Gothic formulations of race, sexuality, and gender. Both ambitious in scope and focused and rigorous in its analysis, this book provides a critically important re-evaluation of the Gothic tradition." —Andrew Smith, University of Glamorgan (UK).


Book Synopsis Nostalgia or Perversion? Gothic Rewriting from the Eighteenth Century until the Present Day by : Isabella van Elferen

Download or read book Nostalgia or Perversion? Gothic Rewriting from the Eighteenth Century until the Present Day written by Isabella van Elferen and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2009-03-26 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nostalgia or Perversion? Gothic Rewriting from the Eighteenth Century until the Present Day presents an interdisciplinary approach to an important aspect of Gothic texts, films, and music: that of rewriting. From the eighteenth-century Gothic novel to present-day vampire films and Goth music, the genre is characterised by its nostalgic reflection on past worlds, narratives, and identities. Gothic nostalgia is often accompanied by a transgressive drive, resulting in perversions of the rewritten past—the modern vampire is no longer embodied evil but an attractive dandy, while Goth subcultures reflect on Victorian aesthetics but pervert them by adding fetishist elements. Gothic nostalgia transforms the past, turning it upside down, foregrounding its background, and corrupting its order. In this volume an international group of philosophy, literature, film, and music scholars investigates the instrumental role of nostalgia and perversion in the Gothic’s rewriting of the past. If elements of both nostalgia and perversion are operative in Gothic rewriting, how are they connected? How do they play out in differing media? How do they change audiences’ views on the relationships between binaries such as past and present, other and self, and norm and deviation? Nostalgia or Perversion brings together the early Gothic novel, present-day female and black Gothic literature, Goth subculture and music, and the imagery of horror films and comic books, thus broadening the definition of ‘Gothic’ from a literary genre to a gesture of pervasive cultural criticism. The interdisciplinary analysis of nostalgia and perversion in Gothic rewriting uncovers wholly new insights into the artistic and social functions of the Gothic, making the volume useful to both scholars and students. As the essays reflect on academic as well as popular texts and media, it is also accessible to general readers. "Nostalgia or Perversion provides a sophisticated analysis of how the Gothic radically rewrites the past, not as nostalgia but as a calculated act of transgression. The past and how its reconstructions break down the boundaries between real and unreal, and normal and abnormal, is examined across a range of different media, including novels, films, comic books, television and music. The essays in this collection also address how this issue shapes Gothic formulations of race, sexuality, and gender. Both ambitious in scope and focused and rigorous in its analysis, this book provides a critically important re-evaluation of the Gothic tradition." —Andrew Smith, University of Glamorgan (UK).

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (with bonus content)

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (with bonus content)

Author: Michael Chabon

Publisher: Random House

Published: 2012-06-12

Total Pages: 706

ISBN-13: 0812993675

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WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The epic, beloved novel of two boy geniuses dreaming up superheroes in New York’s Golden Age of comics, now with special bonus material by the author—soon to be a Showtime limited series “It's absolutely gosh-wow, super-colossal—smart, funny, and a continual pleasure to read.”—The Washington Post Book World Named one of the 10 Best Books of the Decade by Entertainment Weekly • Finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award, National Book Critics Circle Award, and Los Angeles Times Book Prize A “towering, swash-buckling thrill of a book” (Newsweek), hailed as Chabon’s “magnum opus” (The New York Review of Books), The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay is a triumph of originality, imagination, and storytelling, an exuberant, irresistible novel that begins in New York City in 1939. A young escape artist and budding magician named Joe Kavalier arrives on the doorstep of his cousin, Sammy Clay. While the long shadow of Hitler falls across Europe, America is happily in thrall to the Golden Age of comic books, and in a distant corner of Brooklyn, Sammy is looking for a way to cash in on the craze. He finds the ideal partner in the aloof, artistically gifted Joe, and together they embark on an adventure that takes them deep into the heart of Manhattan, and the heart of old-fashioned American ambition. From the shared fears, dreams, and desires of two teenage boys, they spin comic book tales of the heroic, fascist-fighting Escapist and the beautiful, mysterious Luna Moth, otherworldly mistress of the night. Climbing from the streets of Brooklyn to the top of the Empire State Building, Joe and Sammy carve out lives, and careers, as vivid as cyan and magenta ink. Spanning continents and eras, this superb book by one of America’s finest writers remains one of the defining novels of our modern American age. Winner of the Bay Area Book Reviewers Award and the New York Society Library Book Award


Book Synopsis The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (with bonus content) by : Michael Chabon

Download or read book The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (with bonus content) written by Michael Chabon and published by Random House. This book was released on 2012-06-12 with total page 706 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The epic, beloved novel of two boy geniuses dreaming up superheroes in New York’s Golden Age of comics, now with special bonus material by the author—soon to be a Showtime limited series “It's absolutely gosh-wow, super-colossal—smart, funny, and a continual pleasure to read.”—The Washington Post Book World Named one of the 10 Best Books of the Decade by Entertainment Weekly • Finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award, National Book Critics Circle Award, and Los Angeles Times Book Prize A “towering, swash-buckling thrill of a book” (Newsweek), hailed as Chabon’s “magnum opus” (The New York Review of Books), The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay is a triumph of originality, imagination, and storytelling, an exuberant, irresistible novel that begins in New York City in 1939. A young escape artist and budding magician named Joe Kavalier arrives on the doorstep of his cousin, Sammy Clay. While the long shadow of Hitler falls across Europe, America is happily in thrall to the Golden Age of comic books, and in a distant corner of Brooklyn, Sammy is looking for a way to cash in on the craze. He finds the ideal partner in the aloof, artistically gifted Joe, and together they embark on an adventure that takes them deep into the heart of Manhattan, and the heart of old-fashioned American ambition. From the shared fears, dreams, and desires of two teenage boys, they spin comic book tales of the heroic, fascist-fighting Escapist and the beautiful, mysterious Luna Moth, otherworldly mistress of the night. Climbing from the streets of Brooklyn to the top of the Empire State Building, Joe and Sammy carve out lives, and careers, as vivid as cyan and magenta ink. Spanning continents and eras, this superb book by one of America’s finest writers remains one of the defining novels of our modern American age. Winner of the Bay Area Book Reviewers Award and the New York Society Library Book Award

Methods for the Study of Literature as Cultural Memory

Methods for the Study of Literature as Cultural Memory

Author:

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2022-06-08

Total Pages: 477

ISBN-13: 9004488596

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In this volume collaborators from different universities all over the world explore a wide variety of methods for the study of literature as cultural memory. In literature, the past may be (re)constructed in various ways and in very diverse forms. This immediately raises the question as to how one can describe and inventory the various discourses and metadiscourses of historical representation. In what sense can the rhetoric of literary historiography itself contribute to literature's function as cultural memory? Which methods of analysis are most appropriate for describing specific text types or genres as cultural memory? What have been the pragmatic uses and the ethical merits of the stability and continuity that literature has often provided for European, American, Asian and African cultures? What are the dilemmas they create for our teaching at the end of the twentieth century? To all these questions, a wide range of scholars here tries to find answers. In thorough and highly original contributions, they not only address theoretical problems, but also engage themselves in practical analyses of specific works.


Book Synopsis Methods for the Study of Literature as Cultural Memory by :

Download or read book Methods for the Study of Literature as Cultural Memory written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2022-06-08 with total page 477 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this volume collaborators from different universities all over the world explore a wide variety of methods for the study of literature as cultural memory. In literature, the past may be (re)constructed in various ways and in very diverse forms. This immediately raises the question as to how one can describe and inventory the various discourses and metadiscourses of historical representation. In what sense can the rhetoric of literary historiography itself contribute to literature's function as cultural memory? Which methods of analysis are most appropriate for describing specific text types or genres as cultural memory? What have been the pragmatic uses and the ethical merits of the stability and continuity that literature has often provided for European, American, Asian and African cultures? What are the dilemmas they create for our teaching at the end of the twentieth century? To all these questions, a wide range of scholars here tries to find answers. In thorough and highly original contributions, they not only address theoretical problems, but also engage themselves in practical analyses of specific works.

Cultural Studies

Cultural Studies

Author: Lawrence Grossberg

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2005-08-08

Total Pages: 143

ISBN-13: 1134805187

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First published in 1995. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.


Book Synopsis Cultural Studies by : Lawrence Grossberg

Download or read book Cultural Studies written by Lawrence Grossberg and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2005-08-08 with total page 143 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1995. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Beyond Nostalgia

Beyond Nostalgia

Author: Ruth E. Ray

Publisher: University of Virginia Press

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 294

ISBN-13: 9780813919393

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For three years, Ruth E. Ray visited and participated in eight writing groups at six senior centers in inner-city and suburban Detroit, looking for ways in which the elderly fashion their memories through personal narrative. Her innovative book involves the reader in the construction of life stories as a richly rewarding and highly social process that often reveals the types of relationships that dominate the lives of group members, the majority of whom are women. Because Ray wrote and responded herself and shares her anxiety and triumph in presenting her writing to women old enough to be her mother, some of a different race and class, Beyond Nostalgia is an excellent primer for professionals working with diverse groups in a variety of settings. It is also an important contribution to the emerging field of feminist gerontology. Ray's book demonstrates its own thesis that the presentation and negotiation of life stories in writing groups initiates change and personal growth among older people. Drawing on personal observations, the give-and-take of meeting conversations, lengthy interviews, and the life stories themselves, Ray tells a story of adult development through personal narrative. She recreates the group process through which age peers begin to articulate what life means, both individually and collectively. The writing groups of older adults that Ray studied challenged their members to consider not just cultural influences, but generational effects on the evolving content and structure of their life stories. Age, Ray argues, has been largely ignored by feminists and she makes a strong case for the need to learn how women make meaning of their lives across the life span. As an important document and analysis of that process, Beyond Nostalgia should appeal to academics and practitioners in women's studies, composition studies, gerontology, developmental psyschology, sociology, social work, and linguistics, and to anyone who works with older people.


Book Synopsis Beyond Nostalgia by : Ruth E. Ray

Download or read book Beyond Nostalgia written by Ruth E. Ray and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For three years, Ruth E. Ray visited and participated in eight writing groups at six senior centers in inner-city and suburban Detroit, looking for ways in which the elderly fashion their memories through personal narrative. Her innovative book involves the reader in the construction of life stories as a richly rewarding and highly social process that often reveals the types of relationships that dominate the lives of group members, the majority of whom are women. Because Ray wrote and responded herself and shares her anxiety and triumph in presenting her writing to women old enough to be her mother, some of a different race and class, Beyond Nostalgia is an excellent primer for professionals working with diverse groups in a variety of settings. It is also an important contribution to the emerging field of feminist gerontology. Ray's book demonstrates its own thesis that the presentation and negotiation of life stories in writing groups initiates change and personal growth among older people. Drawing on personal observations, the give-and-take of meeting conversations, lengthy interviews, and the life stories themselves, Ray tells a story of adult development through personal narrative. She recreates the group process through which age peers begin to articulate what life means, both individually and collectively. The writing groups of older adults that Ray studied challenged their members to consider not just cultural influences, but generational effects on the evolving content and structure of their life stories. Age, Ray argues, has been largely ignored by feminists and she makes a strong case for the need to learn how women make meaning of their lives across the life span. As an important document and analysis of that process, Beyond Nostalgia should appeal to academics and practitioners in women's studies, composition studies, gerontology, developmental psyschology, sociology, social work, and linguistics, and to anyone who works with older people.

Elmore Leonard's 10 Rules of Writing

Elmore Leonard's 10 Rules of Writing

Author: Elmore Leonard

Publisher: Harper Collins

Published: 2009-10-13

Total Pages: 98

ISBN-13: 0061843393

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"These are the rules I've picked up along the way to help me remain invisible when I'm writing a book, to help me show rather than tell what's taking place in the story."—Elmore Leonard For aspiring writers and lovers of the written word, this concise guide breaks down the writing process with simplicity and clarity. From adjectives and exclamation points to dialect and hoopetedoodle, Elmore Leonard explains what to avoid, what to aspire to, and what to do when it sounds like "writing" (rewrite). Beautifully designed, filled with free-flowing, elegant illustrations and specially priced, Elmore Leonard's 10 Rules of Writing is the perfect writer's—and reader's—gift.


Book Synopsis Elmore Leonard's 10 Rules of Writing by : Elmore Leonard

Download or read book Elmore Leonard's 10 Rules of Writing written by Elmore Leonard and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-10-13 with total page 98 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "These are the rules I've picked up along the way to help me remain invisible when I'm writing a book, to help me show rather than tell what's taking place in the story."—Elmore Leonard For aspiring writers and lovers of the written word, this concise guide breaks down the writing process with simplicity and clarity. From adjectives and exclamation points to dialect and hoopetedoodle, Elmore Leonard explains what to avoid, what to aspire to, and what to do when it sounds like "writing" (rewrite). Beautifully designed, filled with free-flowing, elegant illustrations and specially priced, Elmore Leonard's 10 Rules of Writing is the perfect writer's—and reader's—gift.

Rewriting

Rewriting

Author: Christian Moraru

Publisher: SUNY Press

Published: 2001-09-27

Total Pages: 252

ISBN-13: 9780791451076

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Examines the tendency of post-World War II writers to rewrite earlier narratives by Poe, Melville, Hawthorne, and others.


Book Synopsis Rewriting by : Christian Moraru

Download or read book Rewriting written by Christian Moraru and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 2001-09-27 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines the tendency of post-World War II writers to rewrite earlier narratives by Poe, Melville, Hawthorne, and others.

Homemaking

Homemaking

Author: Anindya Raychaudhuri

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2018-10-19

Total Pages: 218

ISBN-13: 1783482648

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Is it possible to think of a counter-hegemonic, progressive nostalgia that celebrates and helps sustain the marginalised? What might such a nostalgia look like, and what political importance might it have? Homemaking: Radical Nostalgia and the Construction of a South Asian Diaspora examines diasporic life in south Asian communities in Europe, North America and Australia, to map the ways in which members of these communities use nostalgia to construct distinctive identities. Using a series of examples from literature, cinema, visual art, music, computer games, mainstream media, physical and virtual spaces and many other cultural objects, this book argues that it is possible, and necessary, to read this nostalgia as helping to create a powerful notion of home that can help to transcend international relations of empire and capital, and create instead a pan-national space of belonging. This homemaking represents the persistent search for somewhere to belong on one’s own terms. Constructed through word, image and music, preserved through dreams and imagination, the home provides sustenance in the continuing struggle to change the present and the future for the better.


Book Synopsis Homemaking by : Anindya Raychaudhuri

Download or read book Homemaking written by Anindya Raychaudhuri and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2018-10-19 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is it possible to think of a counter-hegemonic, progressive nostalgia that celebrates and helps sustain the marginalised? What might such a nostalgia look like, and what political importance might it have? Homemaking: Radical Nostalgia and the Construction of a South Asian Diaspora examines diasporic life in south Asian communities in Europe, North America and Australia, to map the ways in which members of these communities use nostalgia to construct distinctive identities. Using a series of examples from literature, cinema, visual art, music, computer games, mainstream media, physical and virtual spaces and many other cultural objects, this book argues that it is possible, and necessary, to read this nostalgia as helping to create a powerful notion of home that can help to transcend international relations of empire and capital, and create instead a pan-national space of belonging. This homemaking represents the persistent search for somewhere to belong on one’s own terms. Constructed through word, image and music, preserved through dreams and imagination, the home provides sustenance in the continuing struggle to change the present and the future for the better.

Moonglow

Moonglow

Author: Michael Chabon

Publisher: HarperCollins

Published: 2016-11-22

Total Pages: 414

ISBN-13: 006222557X

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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Winner of the Sophie Brody Medal • An NBCC Finalist for 2016 Award for Fiction • ALA Carnegie Medal Finalist for Excellence in Fiction • Wall Street Journal’s Best Novel of the Year • A New York Times Notable Book of the Year • A Washington Post Best Book of the Year • An NPR Best Book of the Year • A Slate Best Book of the Year • A Christian Science Monitor Top 15 Fiction Book of the Year • A New York Magazine Best Book of the Year • A San Francisco Chronicle Book of the Year • A Buzzfeed Best Book of the Year • A New York Post Best Book of the Year iBooks Novel of the Year • An Amazon Editors' Top 20 Book of the Year • #1 Indie Next Pick • #1 Amazon Spotlight Pick • A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice • A BookPage Top Fiction Pick of the Month • An Indie Next Bestseller "This book is beautiful.” — A.O. Scott, New York Times Book Review, cover review Following on the heels of his New York Times bestselling novel Telegraph Avenue, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Michael Chabon delivers another literary masterpiece: a novel of truth and lies, family legends, and existential adventure—and the forces that work to destroy us. In 1989, fresh from the publication of his first novel, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, Michael Chabon traveled to his mother’s home in Oakland, California, to visit his terminally ill grandfather. Tongue loosened by powerful painkillers, memory stirred by the imminence of death, Chabon’s grandfather shared recollections and told stories the younger man had never heard before, uncovering bits and pieces of a history long buried and forgotten. That dreamlike week of revelations forms the basis for the novel Moonglow, the latest feat of legerdemain from Pulitzer Prize-winning author Michael Chabon. Moonglow unfolds as the deathbed confession of a man the narrator refers to only as “my grandfather.” It is a tale of madness, of war and adventure, of sex and marriage and desire, of existential doubt and model rocketry, of the shining aspirations and demonic underpinnings of American technological accomplishment at midcentury, and, above all, of the destructive impact—and the creative power—of keeping secrets and telling lies. It is a portrait of the difficult but passionate love between the narrator’s grandfather and his grandmother, an enigmatic woman broken by her experience growing up in war-torn France. It is also a tour de force of speculative autobiography in which Chabon devises and reveals a secret history of his own imagination. From the Jewish slums of prewar South Philadelphia to the invasion of Germany, from a Florida retirement village to the penal utopia of New York’s Wallkill prison, from the heyday of the space program to the twilight of the “American Century,” the novel revisits an entire era through a single life and collapses a lifetime into a single week. A lie that tells the truth, a work of fictional nonfiction, an autobiography wrapped in a novel disguised as a memoir, Moonglow is Chabon at his most moving and inventive.


Book Synopsis Moonglow by : Michael Chabon

Download or read book Moonglow written by Michael Chabon and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2016-11-22 with total page 414 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Winner of the Sophie Brody Medal • An NBCC Finalist for 2016 Award for Fiction • ALA Carnegie Medal Finalist for Excellence in Fiction • Wall Street Journal’s Best Novel of the Year • A New York Times Notable Book of the Year • A Washington Post Best Book of the Year • An NPR Best Book of the Year • A Slate Best Book of the Year • A Christian Science Monitor Top 15 Fiction Book of the Year • A New York Magazine Best Book of the Year • A San Francisco Chronicle Book of the Year • A Buzzfeed Best Book of the Year • A New York Post Best Book of the Year iBooks Novel of the Year • An Amazon Editors' Top 20 Book of the Year • #1 Indie Next Pick • #1 Amazon Spotlight Pick • A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice • A BookPage Top Fiction Pick of the Month • An Indie Next Bestseller "This book is beautiful.” — A.O. Scott, New York Times Book Review, cover review Following on the heels of his New York Times bestselling novel Telegraph Avenue, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Michael Chabon delivers another literary masterpiece: a novel of truth and lies, family legends, and existential adventure—and the forces that work to destroy us. In 1989, fresh from the publication of his first novel, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, Michael Chabon traveled to his mother’s home in Oakland, California, to visit his terminally ill grandfather. Tongue loosened by powerful painkillers, memory stirred by the imminence of death, Chabon’s grandfather shared recollections and told stories the younger man had never heard before, uncovering bits and pieces of a history long buried and forgotten. That dreamlike week of revelations forms the basis for the novel Moonglow, the latest feat of legerdemain from Pulitzer Prize-winning author Michael Chabon. Moonglow unfolds as the deathbed confession of a man the narrator refers to only as “my grandfather.” It is a tale of madness, of war and adventure, of sex and marriage and desire, of existential doubt and model rocketry, of the shining aspirations and demonic underpinnings of American technological accomplishment at midcentury, and, above all, of the destructive impact—and the creative power—of keeping secrets and telling lies. It is a portrait of the difficult but passionate love between the narrator’s grandfather and his grandmother, an enigmatic woman broken by her experience growing up in war-torn France. It is also a tour de force of speculative autobiography in which Chabon devises and reveals a secret history of his own imagination. From the Jewish slums of prewar South Philadelphia to the invasion of Germany, from a Florida retirement village to the penal utopia of New York’s Wallkill prison, from the heyday of the space program to the twilight of the “American Century,” the novel revisits an entire era through a single life and collapses a lifetime into a single week. A lie that tells the truth, a work of fictional nonfiction, an autobiography wrapped in a novel disguised as a memoir, Moonglow is Chabon at his most moving and inventive.