Writing in an Age of Silence

Writing in an Age of Silence

by Paretsky (Author)

Synopsis

In this powerful book, Sara Paretsky explores the traditions of political and literary dissent that have informed her life and work, against the unparalleled repression of free speech and thought in the US today. In tracing the writer's difficult journey from silence to speech, she turns to her childhood and youth in rural Kansas, and brilliantly evokes Chicago - the city with which she has become indelibly associated - from her arrival during the Civil Rights struggle in the mid-1960s to her most extraordinary literary creation, the South Side detective V.I. Warshawski. Paretsky traces the emergence of V.I. Warshawski from the shadows of the loner detectives that stalk the mean streets of Dashiell Hammett's and Raymond Chandler's novels, and in the process explores American individualism, the failure of the American dream, and the resulting dystopia. Both memoir and meditation, Writing in an Age of Silence is a compelling exploration of the writer's art and daunting responsibility in the face of the assault on US civil liberties post-9/11.

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More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 160
Edition: 2nd
Publisher: Verso
Published: 11 May 2009

ISBN 10: 1844673774
ISBN 13: 9781844673773

Media Reviews
This poignant and compelling personal testimony explains both the influences which made her a writer and the kind of writer she became... both a testimony and a polemic; it is one woman's voice among many, but it is a powerful one. P D James, Spectator Paretsky has always been at her best when describing blue-collar America... with the kind of passion for social justice that inspired Chandler and Hammett. Paretsky's grasp of industrial architecture, the barren wastelands in which factories and warehouses dwarf the humans who toil inside them, is without parallel in contemporary crime fiction. -Joan Smith, The Sunday Times
Author Bio
Sara Paretsky is the author of the bestselling V.I. Warshawski novels, including, most recently, Fire Sale and Blacklist. The winner of many awards, including the Cartier Diamond Dagger award for lifetime achievement from the British Crime Writers' Association, she lives in Chicago.