The Flame Alphabet - Brossura

Ben Marcus

Brossura

ISBN 10: 1847086241 ISBN 13: 9781847086242

Casa editrice: Granta, 2013

Riassunto

A terrible epidemic has struck the country and the sound of children's speech has become lethal. Radio transmissions from strange sources indicate that people are going into hiding. All Sam and Claire need to do is look around the neighbourhood: In the park, parents wither beneath the powerful screams of their children. At night, suburban side streets become routes of shameful escape for fathers trying to get outside the radius of affliction. With Claire nearing collapse, it seems their only means of survival is to flee from their daughter, Esther, who laughs at her parents' sickness, unaware that in just a few years she, too, will be susceptible to the language toxicity. But Sam and Claire find it isn't so easy to leave the daughter they still love, even as they waste away from her malevolent speech. On the eve of their departure, Claire mysteriously disappears, and Sam, determined to find a cure for this new toxic language, presses on alone into a world beyond recognition. The Flame Alphabet invites the question: what is left of civilization when we lose the ability to communicate with those we love? Both morally engaged and wickedly entertaining, a gripping page-turner as strange as it is moving, this intellectual horror story ensures Ben Marcus's position in the first rank of American novelists.

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Recensione:

A measure of the book's success is that it enforces not just a suspension of disbelief, but for a while total surrender of the faculty of reason ... The drama of parental obsolescence is sharply articulated, as is the condition of terrorised parental love --Guardian

An unforgettable experience. This is, quite simply, one of the most powerful works of fiction it has ever been my privilege to read ...
As I approached the final pages I felt tearful, nauseous, shivery, exhausted, terrified and short of breath ... It is a novel which has profound things to say about matters metaphysical but does so in a way that creates a physiological response ... The Flame Alphabet is a revelation and a castigation ... literature that makes sense of our age and will be read in ages to come --Scotsman

Ben Marcus s new novel is an eye-burning high-literary encounter with science fiction ... The Flame Alphabet is abuzz throughout with the kind of scorching prose that we d expect from such bona fide American literature hot stuff --Dazed & Confused

Larded with creepy metaphors, the author's own wayward language destabilises the reader s sense of linguistic propriety. --Independent

The most unsettling novel of the year. Hitherto known as an experimental writer - The Age of the Wire and String fascinated, delighted and baffled me in 1995 - his orbit has gradually been approaching Earth over the past 18 years, but he's still out there. Horribly vivid... It looks from a distance like a sci-fi dystopia but is, in fact, far more interesting than that. --'Best Paperbacks of 2013', Guardian

The Flame Alphabet gets into your head and under your skin and stays there. --'Books of the Year' chosen by Josh Cohen, The Big Issue

L'autore:

Ben Marcus is the author of three previous books; Notable American Women, The Father Costume, and the legendary The Age of Wire and String. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, Paris Review, Believer, New York Times, and McSweeney's. He has received a Whiting Writers Award, a NEA Fellowship in fiction, and three Pushcart Prizes. He is an associate professor at Columbia University.

Su questa edizione

• Editore: Granta
• Data di pubblicazione: 2013
• ISBN 10: 1847086241
• ISBN 13: 9781847086242
• Rilegatura: Copertina flessibile
• Numero di pagine: 304