Oh Pure and Radiant Heart - Softcover

Millet, Lydia

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0434015571 ISBN 13: 9780434015573

Publisher: William Heinemann Ltd, 2006

Synopsis

Rare Book

About this title

From the Publisher:

An extraordinarily original novel of the A-bomb era, comparable to Vonnegut, Delillo, Murakami and Houellebecq in its unsettling power and striking originality.

'Millet is da bomb. Literally... Though Oh Pure and Radiant Heart possesses the nervy irreverence of Kurt Vonnegut and Joseph Heller, Millet makes the subject matter her own, capturing the essence of these geniuses in a way that can only be described as, well, genius.’ Vanity Fair

From the Back Cover:

'Millet is da bomb. Literally' Vanity Fair

‘Millet approaches our troubling nuclear legacy by boldly positing an outlandish premise, and then taking it to dizzying and unforeseeable heights... Millet excels at rapid-fire and piquantly funny dialogue... For all its frenetic energy and fiery satire, Oh Pure and Radiant Heart – part farce, part comedy of errors, part spiritual inquiry, part historical testimony, part love story – is an acutely sensitive novel, a work of many moods and modes, a richly dimensional, shrewd and humanistic tale in the manner of Mark Twain, Kurt Vonnegut and Haruki Murakami... Mesmerising’ Chicago Tribune

July 16, 1945. The world’s first atomic mushroom cloud rises above the New Mexico desert. Physicists Robert Oppenheimer and Enrico Fermi are there to watch the detonation of their brainchild. The bomb’s third ‘godfather’, Leo Szilard, is in Chicago. As the bomb detonates, all three suddenly find themselves in unfamiliar surroundings having, somehow, arrived in the year 2003.

When the three scientists appear in Santa Fe, Ann, a librarian, and her doting gardener husband, Ben, take them in, only to be swept up in a quixotic quest that takes them from Hiroshima to the United Nations on a ramshackle pilgrimage for nuclear disarmament. As the scientists, faced with the dismaying evidence of their nuclear legacy, cross the United States, they attract a growing convoy of groupies, activists, New-Age freeloaders and religious fanatics who believe that Oppenheimer is the Messiah. Meanwhile Ann and Ben fight to save their marriage, threatened by her obsessive devotion to the men of the Manhattan project.

In this heroically mischievous tour de force, Lydia Millet tells an apocalyptic fable that evokes both the beauty and the tragedy of the nuclear sublime.

‘Millet has staked her novelistic reputation on taking chances... Oh Pure and Radiant Heart may be her biggest gamble yet, it also promises to have the largest payoff.’ Washington Post

‘One of my favorite contemporary American writers, Millett never repeats a trick and has invented more than a few.’ Jonathan Lethem

'Compulsively readable, but also thought-provoking and even disturbing.' Locus

‘Brilliant and fearless... A shattering and beautiful work’ Entertainment Weekly

About this edition

• Publisher: William Heinemann Ltd
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0434015571
• ISBN 13: 9780434015573
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 464