The Man Without a Shadow - Hardcover

Oates, Joyce Carol

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 006241609X ISBN 13: 9780062416094

Publisher: Ecco, 2016

Synopsis

In 1965, neuroscientist Margot Sharpe meets Elihu Hoopes: the man without a shadow, who will be known, in time, as the most-studied and most famous amnesiac in history. A vicious infection has clouded anything beyond the last seventy seconds just beyond the fog of memory.Over the course of thirty years, the two embark on mirrored journeys of self-discovery: Margot, enthralled by her charming, mysterious, and deeply lonely patient, as well as her officious supervisor, attempts to unlock Eli s shuttered memories of a childhood trauma without losing her own sense of self in the process. Made vivid by Oates usual eye for detail, and searing insight into the human psyche, The Man Without a Shadow is eerie, ambitious, and structurally complex, unique among her novels for its intimate portrayal of a forbidden relationship that can never be publicly revealed."

About this title

Review:

"Wonderfully illuminating...one of the most curious and moving love affairs in contemporary fiction."--Washington Post

"A novel that's twisty and heartrending in equal measure...the kind of work that can inspire endless analysis and discussion, because the question it probes is really at the heart of the human experience: who are we, really?"--AV Club

"A profound and moving meditation on how memory shapes our personalities and, by extension, the emotions that we provoke in others."--Publishers Weekly

"Oates excels at creating spooky, off-kilter atmospherics...The maze of memory is an ideal setting for Oates' trademark mixture of melodrama and pathos."--Kirkus Reviews

About the Author:

Joyce Carol Oates is a recipient of the National Medal of Humanities, the National Book Critics Circle Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award, the National Book Award, and the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction, and has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. She has written some of the most enduring fiction of our time, including We Were the Mulvaneys; Blonde, which was nominated for the National Book Award; and the New York Times bestseller The Accursed. She is the Roger S. Berlind Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at Princeton University and has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters since 1978.

About this edition

• Publisher: Ecco
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 006241609X
• ISBN 13: 9780062416094
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 272