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The Sorrows of an American

The Sorrows of an American

by SiriHustvedt (Author)

  • Used

    Paperback 2009

    $3.76

  • Used

    Hardcover 2008

    $4.20

  • New

    Paperback 2008

    $18.89
Synopsis

After their father's funeral, Erik and Inga Davidsen find a cryptic letter from an unknown woman among his papers, dating from his adolescence in rural Minnesota during the Depression. Returning to his psychiatric practice in New York, Erik sets about reading his father's memoir, hoping to discover the man he never fully understood.

At the same time, another woman enters Erik's lonely, divorced life - a beautiful Jamaican who moves into his garden flat with her small daughter. As Erik gets drawn into the cat-and-mouse tactics of someone who appears to be stalking her, he finds out that his sister Inga is also being threatened, by a journalist in possession of a wounding secret from her past.

A multi-layered novel that probes the mysteries of the heart and mind, THE SORROWS OF AN AMERICAN is compulsive, thought-provoking and profoundly affecting.

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More Information

Format: Paperback
 Pages: 320
 Publisher: Sceptre
Published: 02 Apr 2009
ISBN 10: 0340897082
ISBN 13: 9780340897089
Book Overview: The dazzling new novel by the author of the international bestseller, WHAT I LOVED, about the secrets and ghosts that haunt families from one generation to the next

Media Reviews
Beautifully thought through, deeply serious and enormously intelligent * Jane Smiley, Guardian *
This passionately conceived, coolly delivered work is almost certainly the best American novel you will read all year . . . not to be missed * Melissa Katsoulis, Sunday Telegraph *
A mystery story that develops into a subtle and complex novel . . . sharp, confident, tolerant and civilised * Tom Deveson, Sunday Times *
This novel is easily described as wonderful . . . THE SORROWS OF AN AMERICAN feels like a very personal story and is all the more intimate for it . . . her skill lies in convincing the reader that we have seen right inside someone's soul * Viv Groskop, Observer *
For all its cerebral riches, this novel is composed with superb artistry, Hustvedt handles the numerous interlocking narratives with immense skill. . . It is proof of Hustvedt's talent that the terrors of this novel feel real * John de Falbe, Literary Review *
This satisfying and emotionally rich follow-up to Ms Hustvedt's acclaimed WHAT I LOVED treads some similar themes: love and loss; the limits of perception; the drama of dreams; and the need to craft coherent stories from the unreliable fragments of memory. As with her previous novel, Ms Hustvedt's cerebral characters are tenderly drawn, wise and realistic . . . a beautifully sincere examination of the grim traps of over-active minds * Economist *
A novel of deep wisdom and storytelling * Lucy Beresford in New Statesman *
'It is a rare writer who can both rouse the mind and grip the heart, and all the while provide the sensuous delights of image and language. In her new novel, as in What I Loved, Siri Hustvedt does that and more . . . a book that's almost impossible to put down, and even harder not to re-read' * Lisa Appignanesi, Independent *
Author Bio

Siri Hustvedt's first novel, The Blindfold, was published by Sceptre in 1993. Since then she has published The Enchantment of Lily Dahl, What I Loved, The Sorrows of an American, The Summer Without Men and The Blazing World, which was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2014 and won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction. She is also the author of the poetry collection Reading To You, and four collections of essays -Yonder, Mysteries of the Rectangle: Essays on Painting, A Plea for Eros and Living, Thinking, Looking, as well as the memoir The Shaking Woman or A History of My Nerves.

Born in Minnesota, Siri Hustvedt now lives in Brooklyn, New York. She has a PhD in English from Columbia University and in 2012 was awarded the International Gabarron Prize for Thought and Humanities.
She delivered the Schelling Lecture in Aesthetics in Munich in 2010, the Freud Lecture in Vienna in 2011 and the opening keynote at the conference to mark Kierkegaard's 200th anniversary in Copenhagen in 2013, while her latest honorary doctorate is from the University of Gutenburg in Germany. She is also Lecturer in Psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College and has written on art for the New York Times, the Daily Telegraph and several exhibition catalogues.