The Lacuna (Modern Classics)

Kingsolver, Barbara

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0062206478 ISBN 13: 9780062206473

Publisher: Harper Collins USA, 2013

New York Times bestselling author Barbara Kingsolver's The Lacuna is an ambitious and gripping historical novel about Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, Communism, and one man's epic search for identity in Mexico and the United States.

The author of The Poisonwood Bible; Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and more; Kingsolver tells the complex, gripping tale of Harrison William Shepherd, a writer whose journey from the 1920s to the '50s allows him to witness the tumultuous lives of artists Rivera and Kahlo in Mexico, the politics of Leon Trotsky, and the bullying tactics of J. Edgar Hoover and McCarthyism in Washington, D.C.

The Lacuna, winner of the Orange Prize for Fiction, is written with Kingsolver's masterful lyricism as she blends real and fictional characters and events in a poignant story of a man torn between two nations and the impact of history on art and artists.

This Harper Perennial Deluxe Modern Classic features beautiful cover artwork on uncoated stock, French flaps, and deckle-edge pages.

Review:

"The most mature and ambitious [novel] she's written...An absorbing portrayal of American life...A rich novel [with] a large, colorful canvas...A tender story about a thoughtful man."--Washington Post

"Rich...impassioned...engrossing...Politics and art dominate the novel, and their overt, unapologetic connection is refreshing."--Chicago Tribune

"Masterful...a reader receives the great gift of entering not one but several worlds...The final pages haunt me still."--San Francisco Chronicle Book Review

"Compelling...Kingsolver's descriptions of life in Mexico City burst with sensory detail--thick sweet breads, vividly painted walls, the lovely white feet of an unattainable love."--The New Yorker

"A work that is often close to magic.... Much research underlies this complex weaving...but the work is lofted by lyric prose."--Denver Post

"Shepherd's story in Kingsolver's accomplished literary hands is so seductive, the prose so elegant, the architecture of the novel so imaginative, it becomes hard to peel away from the book"--Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

"[Kingsolver's] playful pastiche brings to vivid life the culture wars of an earlier era..."--Vogue

..".True and riveting...Barbara Kingsolver has invented a wondrous filling here, sweeter and thicker than pan dulce, spicy as the hottest Mexican chiles, paranoid as the American government hunting Communists "--Philadelphia Inquirer

"A sweeping mural of sensory delights and stimulating ideas about art, government, identity and history...Readers will feel the sting of connection between then and now."--Seattle Times

"A sweeping narrative of utopian dreams and political reality...A stirring novel...intimate and pitch-perfect."--San Diego Union-Tribune

Book Description:

The Orange Prize-winning novel beautifully repackaged to tie-in with the paperback of Flight Behaviour.