The New Republic - Hardcover

Shriver, Lionel

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0062103326 ISBN 13: 9780062103321

Publisher: HarperCollins, 2012

Synopsis

Ostracized as a kid, Edgar Kellogg has always yearned to be popular. A disgruntled New York corporate lawyer, he's more than ready to leave his lucrative career for the excitement and uncertainty of journalism. When he's offered the post of foreign correspondent in a Portuguese backwater that has sprouted a homegrown terrorist movement, Edgar recognizes the disappeared larger-than-life reporter he's been sent to replace, Barrington Saddler, as exactly the outsize character he longs to emulate. Infuriatingly, all his fellow journalists cannot stop talking about their beloved "Bear," who is no longer lighting up their work lives.Yet all is not as it appears. "Os Soldados Ousados de Barba"--"The Daring Soldiers of Barba"--have been blowing up the rest of the world for years in order to win independence for a province so dismal, backward, and windblown that you couldn't give the rat hole away. So why, with Barrington vanished, do terrorist incidents claimed by the "SOB" suddenly dry up? A droll, playful novel, "The New Republic" addresses weighty issues like terrorism with the deft, tongue-in-cheek touch that is vintage Shriver. It also presses the more intimate question: What makes particular people so magnetic, while the rest of us inspire a shrug? What's their secret? And in the end, who has the better life--the admired, or the admirer?

About this title

Review:

Praise for THE NEW REPUBLIC:

‘It takes guts to write a satire about terrorism – and Lionel Shriver has guts. Shriver is an incisive social satirist with a clear grip on the ironies of our contemporary age. Shriver's take on journalism and international politics is wry, insightful and just over the top enough to be fun’ LA TIMES

‘Shriver has the kind of cojones few English-language novelists possess, male or female . . . Barrington comes across as part Falstaff and part Kurtz, with a soupçon of Gatsby . . . Edgar Kellogg himself is living a version of the American Dream of reinvention, but in Shriver’s hands it’s a version that travels through the heart of darkness and tests a man’s soul’ GLOBE & MAIL ‘The New Republic stands at the confluence of a number of fine comic traditions . . . we can only be thankful that Shriver got round to dusting down this comic tour de force for the outing it richly deserves’ SUNDAY TIMES

‘Written with intelligence, wit and pizzazz’ DAILY MAIL

‘She is one of the most magnetically compelling writers working today. Witty, caustic and worldly’ WALL STREET JOURNAL

About the Author:

Lionel Shriver's novels include the New York Times bestseller The Post-Birthday World and the international bestseller We Need to Talk About Kevin, which won the 2005 Orange Prize and has now sold over a million copies worldwide. Earlier books include Double Fault, A Perfectly Good Family, and Checker and the Derailleurs. Her novels have been translated into twenty-five different languages. Her journalism has appeared in the Guardian, The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and many other publications. She lives in London.

About this edition

• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 0062103326
• ISBN 13: 9780062103321
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 373