David Vann

Computers are changing. Soon, the days of silicon-based logic-gate computing will seem like a quaint and distant memory from a charmingly clunky past. Likewise, robots--once designed by mere mortals--will be soon be devised solely by the ultimate designing agency, evolution (with the help of computer modeling of natural selection). Meanwhile, A-Life (artificial life) and mathematical biomimicry--algorithm-based virtual models that map the collective intelligence of nature onto manmade systems--will become as big as genetics is right now. What this future will look like, exactly, is beyond even the scientists. But this book attempts to start the process of imagining it, by pairing researchers at the cutting edge of A-Life and Unconventional Computing with some of the most exciting writers working in English.

America in the near future is the same, but worse. There's no national government anymore. Only local authorities endure, and they barely function. The real glue holding what's left of society together is death. In this America, everyone who dies is celebrated in a lengthy funeral rite by their entire community, the body sewn into an oxhide and hung next to all the others on the town's main street. The whole ritual is led by the oldest member of the community, according to an undeviating script. Maxine is one such elder - 99 years old and living in Lakeport, California. Dogged by chronic pain and the indignity of ageing, burdened by grief and above all by boredom, one day she does the unthinkable and changes the words of the funeral rite. Contrary to her expectations, the entire community follows her lead, and the rebellion gathers momentum, unleashing a spate of violence that may transform the whole disintegrating nation. Initially horrified, Maxine is soon intoxicated by her new powers, and finds herself leading funeral rites that resemble political rallies or bacchanals more than solemn ceremonies. When she launches a pilgrimage across the California desert, it triggers a confrontation with the remaining institutional forces of the country - a confrontation she may not survive. A furiously funny satire on contemporary America, as well as a moving meditation on grief and how it binds us together, this utterly propulsive novel marks an exciting new departure from the author of international bestseller Legend of a Suicide.

Tracy är trött på sitt familjeliv och åker med sin mamma och bror till paradiset Komodo National Park. Men resan blir inte den underbara paus hon har föreställt sig utan spänningen byggs upp mellan familjemedlemmarna.

In his propulsive novel, New York Times Notable author David Vann traces the roots of mental illness in one man's life as he attempts to anchor himself to the places and people that once shaped his sense of identity. Halibut on the Moon is a searing exploration of a man held captive by the dark logic of depression and struggling mightily to wrench himself free. With fierce and unflinching insight, Vann offers us an aching portrait of a mind in peril, searching desperately for some hope of redemption.

In brilliant poetic prose Bright Air Black brings us aboard the ship Argo for its epic return journey across the Black Sea from Persiaâ??s Colchis â?? where Medea flees her home and father with Jason, the Argonauts, and the Golden Fleece.

Sinking deep into debt, and encountering everything from a lost rudder to freak storms, Vann is on the verge of losing everything - including his life. Part high-seas adventure, part journey of self-discovery, A Mile Down is a gripping and unforgettable story of struggle and redemption, by a writer at the top of his game.

'Startlingly brilliant' Spectator'A triumph' Daily Mail'One of America's most powerful writers' Times Literary Supplement Twelve-year-old Caitlin lives alone with her mother - a docker at the local container port - in subsidised housing next to an airport in Seattle.

Goat Mountain is an eleven-year-old boy is eager to make his first kill at his family's annual deer hunt. But all is not as it should be. His father discovers a poacher on the land, a 640-acre ranch in Northern California, and shows him to the boy through the scope of his rifle.

In David Vann's searing novel Goat Mountain, an 11-year-old boy at his family's annual deer hunt is eager to make his first kill. His father discovers a poacher on the land, a 640-acre ranch in Northern California, and shows him to the boy through the scope of his rifle. With this simple gesture, tragedy erupts, shattering lives irrevocably. In prose devastating and beautiful in its precision, David Vann creates a haunting and provocative novel that explores our most primal urges and beliefs, the bonds of blood and religion that define and secure us, and the consequences of our actions--what we owe for what we've done. David Vann is the award-winning author of Legend of a Suicide, Caribou Island, A Mile Down, and Last Day on Earth.

Galen kender ikke sin far, hans voldelige stedfar er død og hans bedstemor er skibet af sted på plejehjem. Han og hans mor lever af familiens arv – gamle penge Galens tante og kusine er stålsatte på at indkassere. Galen er New Age, han ser sig selv som en gammel sjæl og drømmer om forandring: at løsrive sig fra det fysiske, at blive så vægtløs som luft, at gå på vandet. Men han kan ikke modstå sin maniske overspisning og bliver mere og mere fikseret på forbudt begær. Fanget i sin ukontrolerbare krop bliver han besat af sin flirtende kusine og af at skille sig af med sin krævende og klynkende mor. Da familien tager på tur sammen spidser tingene til. Og snart opdager Galen, hvor langt han faktisk er villig til at gå for at opnå den transcendens, han sådan higer efter. JORD er en oprivende roman om vold og vanvid, og om hvordan begge dele går i arv. Af forfatteren til CARIBOU ISLAND og FORTÆLLING OM ET SELVMORD.

In David Vann's searing novel Goat Mountain, an 11-year-old boy at his family's annual deer hunt is eager to make his first kill. His father discovers a poacher on the land, a 640-acre ranch in Northern California, and shows him to the boy through the scope of his rifle. With this simple gesture, tragedy erupts, shattering lives irrevocably. In prose devastating and beautiful in its precision, David Vann creates a haunting and provocative novel that explores our most primal urges and beliefs, the bonds of blood and religion that define and secure us, and the consequences of our actions--what we owe for what we've done. David Vann is the award-winning author of Legend of a Suicide, Caribou Island, A Mile Down, and Last Day on Earth.

Twenty-two-year-old Galen is a New Age believer on a warpath towards transcendence. He lives with his emotionally dependent mother in a secluded house, surviving on old family money that his Aunt Helen and cousin Jennifer are determined to get their hands on.

New York Times Editor's ChoiceTwenty-two-year-old Galen lives with his emotionally dependent mother in a secluded house outside Sacramento, surviving on the family's trust fund--money that his aunt, Helen, and seventeen-year-old cousin, Jennifer, are determined to get their hands on. A New Age believer who considers himself an old soul, Galen yearns for transformation but is powerless to stop the manic binges that overtake him. He dreams of shedding his clinging mother and is obsessed with thoughts of the boldly flirtatious Jennifer. But when the family takes a trip to a cabin in the Sierras, Galen discovers just how far he will go to attain the transcendence he craves.

"Dazzling.... Vann knows the darkness but he writes from the compassionate light of art. This is an essential book." --Robert Olen Butler, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain"Exceptional....An unflinching portrait of bad faith and bad dreams." --Ron Rash, author of Burning BrightSet against the backdrop of Alaska's unforgiving wilderness, Caribou Island is David Vann's dark and captivating tale of a marriage pulled apart by rage and regret. With this eagerly anticipated debut novel, a masterful follow-up to his internationally bestselling short fiction anthology, Legend of a Suicide, Vann takes up the mantle of Louise Erdrich, Marilyn Robinson, and Rick Moody, delivering a powerfully wrought, enthrallingly emotional narrative of struggle and isolation.

On a small island in a glacier-fed lake on Alaska's Kenai Peninsula, a marriage is unravelling. Gary, driven by thirty years of diverted plans, and Irene, haunted by a tragedy in her past, are trying to rebuild their life together. Following the outline of Gary's old dream, they're hauling logs out to Caribou Island in good weather and in terrible storms, in sickness and in health, to patch together the kind of cabin that drew them to Alaska in the first place. Across the water on the mainland, Irene and Gary's grown daughter, Rhoda is starting her own life. She fantasizes about the perfect wedding day, whilst her betrothed, Jim the dentist, wonders about the possibility of an altogether different future.From the author of the massively-acclaimed Legend of a Suicide, comes a devastating novel about a marriage, a couple blighted by past shadows and the weight of expectation, of themselves and of each other. Brilliantly drawn and fiercely honest in its depiction of love and disappointment, David Vann's first novel confirms him as one of America's most dazzling writers of fiction.

"The reportorial relentlessness of David] Vann's imagination often makes his fiction seem less written than chiseled. A small, lovely book has been written out of his large and evident pain."--New York Times Book Review In Legend of a Suicide, his heartbreaking semi-autobiographical debut story-collection, David Vann relates the story of a young man trying to come to terms with the guilt and pain of his father's suicide. The wild outback of the author's native Alaska acts as the ideal backdrop for this collage of six stories--a novella and five shorts--and mirrors the author's own psychological wilderness. From "an important new voice in American literature" (Robert Olen Butler, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain) comes an unforgettable exploration of the tragic gaps between one boy and his father.

Roy is still young when his father, a failed dentist and hapless fisherman, puts a .44 magnum to his head and commits suicide on the deck of his beloved boat. Throughout his life, Roy returns to that moment, gripped by its memory and the shadow it casts over his small-town boyhood, describing with poignant, mercurial wit his parents' woeful marriage and inevitable divorce, their kindnesses and weaknesses, the absurd and comic turning-points of his past. Finally, in Legend of a Suicide, Roy lays his father's ghost to rest. But not before he exacts a gruelling, exhilarating revenge.Revolving around a fatally misconceived adventure deep in the wilderness of Alaska, this is a remarkably tender story of survival and disillusioned love.

If you've ever owned a sailboat or had a friend who did, you know how it begins: with a dream. You dream about the ship, and gradually the dream consumes you. Practical considerations lose all meaning ...until, inevitably, the dream morphs into a nightmare. David Vann is familiar with that nightmare. His begins in Turkey: a thirty-year-old tourist, he stumbles across the steel frame of a ninety-foot sailboat that cries out to be built. From friends, family, and credit cards, he borrows the $150,000 to construct the ship. The Turkish builders take shameless advantage of him, eventually charging him over $500,000. On the edge of financial ruin, Vann starts a chartering business. But, when some new part of the ship isn't falling apart, he encounters freak storms. As his debts escalate, Vann begins to wonder if he is merely repeating his father's dreams and failures at seawhich ended with his father's suicide. At once a page-turning true story of adventure on the open ocean and an archetypal tale of one man's attempt to overcome fate and realize his dream, A Mile Down is an unforgettable story of struggle and redemption by a writer at the top of his form.