Kirjahaku

The first and definitive biography of one of the great American novelists of the postwar era, the author of Dog Soldiers and A Flag for Sunrise, and a penetrating critic of American power, innocence, and corruption Robert Stone (1937-2015), probably the only postwar American writer to draw favorable comparisons to Ernest Hemingway, Graham Greene, and Joseph Conrad, lived a life rich in adventure, achievement, and inner turmoil. He grew up rough on the streets of New York, the son of a mentally troubled single mother. After his Navy service in the fifties, which brought him to such locales as pre-Castro Havana, the Suez Crisis, and Antarctica, he studied writing at Stanford, where he met Ken Kesey and became a core member of the gang of Merry Pranksters. The publication of his superb New Orleans novel, Hall of Mirrors (1967), initiated a succession of dark-humored novels that investigated the American experience in Vietnam (Dog Soldiers, 1974, which won the National Book Award), Central America (A Flag for Sunrise, 1981), and Jerusalem on the eve of the millennium (Damascus Gate, 1998). An acclaimed novelist himself, Madison Smartt Bell was a close friend and longtime admirer of Robert Stone. His authorized and deeply researched biography is both intimate and objective, a rich and unsparing portrait of a complicated, charismatic, and haunted man and a sympathetic reading of his work that will help to secure Stone's place in the pantheon of major American writers.

With clarity, verve, and the sure instincts of a good teacher, Madison Smartt Bell offers in this book a roll-up-your-sleeves approach to writing. Focusing on the big picture as well as the crucial details, Bell examines twelve stories by both established writers (including Peter Taylor, Mary Gaitskill, and Carolyn Chute) and his own former students. He shows how to analyze the use of time, plot, character, and other elements of fiction and guides the reader to see each story's flaws and strengths. Careful endnotes bring attention to various writers' different ways of shaping language.

Antoine Lavoisier reinvented chemistry, overthrowing the long-established principles of alchemy and inventing an entirely new terminology, one still in use by chemists. Madison Smartt Bell’s enthralling narrative reads like a race to the finish line, as the very circumstances that enabled Lavoisier to secure his reputation as the father of modern chemistry—a considerable fortune and social connections with the likes of Benjamin Franklin—also caused his glory to be cut short by the French Revolution.

Madison Smartt Bell is one of the most versatile and gifted authors of his generation, a literary stylist with few peers. Doctor Sleep, one of his best novels, is a taut and satisfying psychological thriller planned to be released as a major motion picture under the title Hypnotic. Adrian Strother is a hypnotherapist who, paradoxically, can't get to sleep. He plies his trade in a depressed section of London, doing the occasional job for Scotland Yard, which brings him into contact with an unsavory drug trafficker. As little girls become the target of a serial killer, Adrian treads the line between tortured wakefulness and surreal sleep, and the gifts of his insomnia are called upon to unlock the secrets of a man who believes he has discovered the key to immortality. Part spiritual pilgrimage, part thriller, Doctor Sleep is witty, menacing, and deeply satisfying, a bravura performance by one of today's finest writers.

O Magazine's Top 20 Books to Read This Summer!"In this searing hallucinatory novel set partly in a lunarlike desert, Bell captures a mood of sexual menace, tracing the fates of a teenage girl and her birth mother as they home in on each other. Fleeing the advances of three boys, Julie stumbles into a trippy odyssey among cave paintings, while Marissa, her mother, embarks on her own fever-dream trek toward the daughter she gave up. Best known for his acclaimed Haitian trilogy-All Souls' Rising, Master of the Crossroads and The Stone That the Builder Refused-Bell draws on his own experiences with voodoo possession to re-create his characters' descent into a sinister otherworld. The novel toys with perspective-women shape-shifting into rocks or animals; the same life-or-death scene played repeatedly, with myriad outcomes-in a kind of primal storytelling that crackles with dread and desire."-O MagazineWhen Julie skips school and sets off with her best friend and some local boys for a camping trip in the desert, she finds herself the target of unwanted, drug-fueled sexual attention. Running away in fear, she takes a dangerous fall down the shaft of a vast underground cave, and it takes two days for her to be rescued. Lying unconscious in her hospital bed, Julie hovers between life and death as she travels in a seductive parallel universe inspired by remarkable cave paintings left behind by prehistoric humans.Marko, her attacker, tries to cover his tracks, menacing those who know what happened in the desert that night. Jamal, the youngest son in a family of Iraqi refugees living in Julie's small town, is one of his prime targets. He defies Marko, keeping him away from Julie's bedside and refusing to fall prey to his threats of violence.Meanwhile, Marissa, who gave Julie up for adoption fifteen years earlier when she became pregnant as an adolescent, is following an instinct that leads her back to the daughter she once abandoned. With the aid of Jamal and a local Native American hitman/shaman, she attempts to draw Julie back to consciousness.Madison Smartt Bell is best known for his trilogy of novels about Toussaint Louverture and the Haitian Revolution, including All Souls' Rising, which was a finalist for the National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award.Praise for Behind the Moon:"Madison Smartt Bell writes with the urgency of someone who just received a dire prognosis. And Behind the Moon will remind you that you are alive." -Jonathan Safran Foer, author of Here I Am"Between fever dreams and stone hard reality, Madison Smartt Bell has crafted a powerful examination of what is and what might be. It is simply wonderful." -Dorothy Allison, author of Bastard out of Carolina"I love these characters. I love the writing. Behind the Moon is a brilliant work." -Percival Everett, author of Half an Inch of Water"Bell gives us this fast-paced, spiritually inspired dream-story, full of heart and hope and danger. It's adventure at its finest: a spiked drink, a desert cave, a gunshot, a mother looking for her child. Buckle in: you are headed for a terrific ride."-Deb Olin Unferth, author of Wait Till You See Me Dance"Behind The Moon is a visceral, full body primal experience; terrifying, seductive, Madison Smart Bell at his best."-A.M. Homes, author of May We Be Forgiven"Behind the Moon is a thrilling and uncannily powerful story by one of the best living American fiction writers. I couldn't put it down."-John McManus, author of Fox Tooth Heart"Madison Smartt Bell is one of the great american masters. This book has a pre-religous power, read it and be inspired."-Darcey Steinke, author of Sister Golden Hair: A Novel"With spare but lyrical prose, Madison Smartt Bell tells a harrowing story with propulsive drama. A haunting and hypnotic read."-Heidi W. Durrow, author of The Girl Who Fell From the Sky"Mr. Bell writes like a scrimshaw's angel, as he's been doing, luckily for us, nigh four decades."-George Singleton, author of Calloustown"In his latest work, Madison Smartt Bell secures his position as one of the country's most innovative, inventive and accomplished writers. From the heart-racing opening to the eye-opening end, you won't be able to put this book down."-Jessica Anya Blau, author of The Trouble with Lexie"This cinematic novel is a rare combination of smart literary novel and compelling page-turner, at once menacing and sweeping, dark and transportive, eloquent and hallucinatory."-Michael Kimball, author of Big Ray"Madison Smartt Bell's new novel renders the many ways in which longing can take form, with both disastrous and redemptive consequences."-Chantel Acevedo, author of The Distant Marvels"This latest from National Book Award finalist Bell (after Zig Zag Wanderer) is the story of an illicit teenage camping trip gone awry. . . . Multiple versions and perspectives are pervasive and illustrate the dream space and the story, culminating in a perfect matchup of beginning and ending."-Starred review, Library Journal"Bell, bewitching and incandescently imaginative, masterfully parallels Marissa and Jamal's heart-pounding encounters with mayhem and mystery . . . [a] mind-twisting drama . . ."-Donna Seaman, Booklist"In Bell's latest novel, a girl named Julie, fleeing from a violent sexual encounter in the desert, tumbles into a cave and falls into a fever dream inspired by ancient drawings on the cave walls. . . . [A ] powerful, mind-bending work."-Publishers Weekly"From Bell (The Color of Night, 2011, etc.), a novel about a young woman finding her way back aboveground both literally and metaphorically after a misadventure beneath the surface of things. . . . lyrical, ambitious, and well worth reading."-Kirkus Review"Behind the Moon is an astounding achievement, to be read with an equally astounding freedom. . . . through and through a magical encounter and a novel of mystery, but then what should one expect being taken there behind the moon, that emblem in the sky of love, of unknown loneliness, and uneasy inaccessibility?"-Linda Chown, Numerocinqmagazine"Madison Smartt Bell is one of those novelists who slip the net of classification. . . . lately he's ventured into the American West, for The Color of Night (2011), a goosepimpler about a former Manson cultist, and for his eerie and peculiar novel Behind the Moon."-Sam Sacks on the "Best New Fiction: Literary thrillers by Madison Smartt Bell and others," Wall Street Journal

The sequel to All Souls' Rising and Master of the Crossroads continues the saga of Toussaint Louverture, the leader of the successful Haitian slave revolt, as he continues his struggle to free Haiti from the bonds of slavery and to build a new society on the roots of revolution. Reprint. 10,000 first printing.

"A serious historical novel that reads like a dream." --The Washington Post Book World "One of the most spohisticated fictional treatments of the enduring themes of class, color, and freedom." --San Francisco Chronicle NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALISTPEN/FAULKNER AWARD FINALIST This first installment of the epic Haitian trilogy brings to life a decisive moment in the history of race, class, and colonialism. The slave uprising in Haiti was a momentous contribution to the tide of revolution that swept over the Western world at the end of the 1700s. A brutal rebellion that strove to overturn a vicious system of slavery, the uprising successfully transformed Haiti from a European colony to the world's first Black republic. From the center of this horrific maelstrom, the heroic figure of Toussaint Louverture-a loyal, literate slave and both a devout Catholic and Vodouisant-emerges as the man who will take the merciless fires of violence and vengeance and forge a revolutionary war fueled by liberty and equality. Bell assembles a kaleidoscopic portrait of this seminal movement through a tableau of characters that encompass black, white, male, female, rich, poor, free and enslaved. Pulsing with brilliant detail, All Soul's Rising provides a visceral sense of the pain, terror, confusion, and triumph of revolution.

The critically acclaimed author of All Souls' Rising provides a fictional account of the life and times of Toussaint Louverture, a gifted military and political leader who embarked on a campaign to free the slaves in late-eighteenth-century Haiti in the French colony of Saint Domingue. Reprint. 12,500 first printing.

The critically acclaimed author of All Souls' Rising presents a masterful biography of Toussaint Louverture that captures the frequently contradictory and complex life of the leader of the late-eighteenth-century Haitian Revolution that became the only successful slave revolt in history. Reprint. 12,500 first printing.

A Vietnam vet returns to rural Tennessee in this acclaimed novel from the National Book Award–nominated author of Save Me, Joe Louis. After the horrors of Vietnam, Thomas Laidlaw returns to his home in rural Tennessee where he spends his days raising sheep and growing vegetables. At night he likes to roam the quiet countryside and practice his banjo, revelling in the roots music he finds so grounding. Over time, he resumes his friendship with Rodney Redmon, a fellow vet and childhood friend scarred not only by the wages of war, but also by the deep wounds of racism. As the two friends piece together a new life as civilians, they also piece together a band with the addition of a fiddler. Through a masterful accumulation of details, Bell brings his story to a fever pitch, concluding in “an unexpected, if powerful, finale” (Publishers Weekly). “This important, insightful novel” (Library Journal) proves once again that “every sentence [Bell] writes is a joy. His power is exhilarating” (The New Yorker). “Bell’s impressive talents as a writer, which include endowing settings with the significance of character, and a patient, compassionate probing of injured souls, are on full display.” —Publishers Weekly

Two small-time thieves get in over their heads in this literary thriller from the “virtuoso novelist” and author of Soldier’s Joy (The Philadelphia Inquirer). Not quite at home in the backwoods of Tennessee, and even less suited for the service, drifter Macrae lands on his feet in New York City in the 1980s. There, he teams up with a petty thief named Charlie, and the two hit on a scheme to rob people withdrawing money at ATMs. Caught up by their surprising success, they move on to bigger crimes. But as Macrae feels a growing discomfort with the increasing violence and danger of their hardscrabble existence, he wonders if he’s in too deep to make a clean break. With a tightly orchestrated and harrowing conclusion from “one of our most talented novelists . . . This meticulously observed story nevertheless grips us with its lucid prose, its keen psychological insights and the author’s respect for his troubled characters” (Publishers Weekly). “A remarkable read.” —The New York Times Book Review “Bell seems to know intimately the seedy sides of New York, Baltimore and the ex-urban south of housing developments and shopping centers abutting old, dying farms. He renders each locale exquisitely and seems as familiar with street jive as redneck vernacular.” —Los Angeles Times “Ripe for translation to the silver screen.” —Library Journal

Antoine Lavoisier levde vid upplysningens kulmen och tävlade mot sin tids skarpaste hjärnor för att bli den förste att förklara hur kemiska processer verkligen går till. Med hjälp av en stor förmögenhet och en bildad hustru utnyttjade han samtidens sinnrikaste och mest påkostade teknik i en rad nydanande experiment, som för alltid begravde den medeltida alkemin och etablerade ett kemiskt språk som används än i dag. En lärd och lättläst framställning av 1700-talets stora kapplöpning för att förstå grundämnena och grunda en modern vetenskap. Boken är populärvetenskapligt skriven och förutsätter ej kunskaper i kemi.

Aunque el nacimiento de una nueva ciencia siempre constituya un hito histórico, no es frecuente que una revolución científica tenga como telón de fondo una revolución política. El destino quiso que Antoine Lavoisier fuese exponente de ambos acontecimientos: un genuino representante del Siglo de las Luces, que vio su vida segada por el Régimen del Terror.Gracias a sus prodigiosas dotes intelectuales, a la fortuna que amasó con sus propios esfuerzos y a la colaboración de su inteligente esposa, Lavoisier ocupó un lugar prominente en el panorama científico de finales del siglo XVIII. Desde esa posición privilegiada tomó parte en la disputa por descubrir los procesos químicos que tenían lugar durante la combustión. Bajo la atenta mirada de la comunidad científica internacional, Lavoisier y su principal rival, el inglés Joseph Priestley, descubrieron el oxígeno por separado. Pero fue Lavoisier quien, mediante su teoría de las reacciones químicas, basada en novedosos experimentos realizados con la más avanzada tecnología instrumental, acabó con los últimos vestigios de la alquimia medieval y señaló el comienzo de la química moderna. El tratado donde formuló la nueva ciencia salió publicado apenas cuatro meses antes de la toma de la Bastilla.