The Vices

Fülszöveg

, forty-one, prominent philosopher, scholar, and art collector, is missing and presumed dead, over the side of Queen Mary 2. Troubled by his friends possible suicide, the unnamed narrator of Law^rence Douglass new novel launches an all-consuming investigation into Vice's life story. Fascinadon turns to obsession as he peels back the layers of the Vice family's rich and bizarre history. At the heart of the family are Francizka, Oliver's handsome, overbearing, vaguely anti-Semitic Hungarian mother; and his fraternal twin brother, Bartholomew, a gigantic and troubled young man with a morbid interest in Europe's great tyrants. As the narrator finds himself drawn into a batde over the family's money and art, he comes to sense that someone—or perhaps the entire family—is hiding an unsavory past.
is the author of the novel The Catastrophist (Other Press), a Kirkus Best Book of 2006; The Memory of Judgement, a widely acclaimed study of war crimes trials; and coauthor of a book of humor,... Tovább

Fülszöveg

, forty-one, prominent philosopher, scholar, and art collector, is missing and presumed dead, over the side of Queen Mary 2. Troubled by his friends possible suicide, the unnamed narrator of Law^rence Douglass new novel launches an all-consuming investigation into Vice's life story. Fascinadon turns to obsession as he peels back the layers of the Vice family's rich and bizarre history. At the heart of the family are Francizka, Oliver's handsome, overbearing, vaguely anti-Semitic Hungarian mother; and his fraternal twin brother, Bartholomew, a gigantic and troubled young man with a morbid interest in Europe's great tyrants. As the narrator finds himself drawn into a batde over the family's money and art, he comes to sense that someone—or perhaps the entire family—is hiding an unsavory past.
is the author of the novel The Catastrophist (Other Press), a Kirkus Best Book of 2006; The Memory of Judgement, a widely acclaimed study of war crimes trials; and coauthor of a book of humor, Sense and Nonsensibility. His writing has appeared in numerous publications, including the The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, The Hudson Review, McSweeneys, and the Times Literary Supplement. Douglas teaches at Amherst College.
PRAISE FOR
m VICES
"Though The Vices unfolds the complexity of its whodunit with an appealing urbanity and wryness, its central virtue is the compassionate intelligence of its depiction of pain: the anguish and secret costs of self-reinvention, and in the face of history's miseries and deceits, the unexpected consolations of uncertainty." -JIM SHEPARD, AUTHOR OF LIKE YOU'D UNDERSTAND. ANYWAY
'Crisply told and vigorously compelling. Douglas's bright sense of humor camouflages but does not ultimately conceal his haunting story's menacing undertow." -BRAD LEITHAUSER, AUTHOR OF THE ART STUDENTS WAR
'Charming and exquisite, The Vices is an urbane comedy imbued with the eccentric verve of a Wes Anderson film and the piquant nostalgia of Brideshead Revisited. It's also a gripping tale of fraud, compromise, and the inventive ways we survive the nightmare of history." -ZACHARY LAZAR, AUTHOR OF SWAY
At its core a mystery. The Vices is a witty, provocative, and devilishly entertaining book. Sometimes philosophical, sometimes wildly comic, Lawrence Douglas's latest novel plays yearning against satisfaction, prestige against authenticity, and, ultimately, the desire to be someone else against the difficulty of inhabiting self." -SABINA MURRAY, AUTHOR OF THE CAPRICES AND FORGERY Vissza