Hell: A Novel - Softcover

Butler, Robert Olen

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0802145094 ISBN 13: 9780802145093

Publisher: Grove Press / Atlantic Monthly Press, 2010

Synopsis

"A novel that explores the darker side of human nature while making you laugh so hard iced tea almost comes out your nose." -The Tampa Tribune

One of American literature's brightest stars and author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain reimagines the underworld in an uproarious novel. Its main character, Hatcher McCord, is an evening news presenter who has found himself in Hell and is struggling to explain his bad fortune. He's not the only one to suffer this fate—in fact, he's surrounded by an outrageous cast of characters, including Humphrey Bogart, William Shakespeare, and almost all of the popes and most of the US presidents. The question may be not who is in Hell, but who isn't.

McCord is living with Anne Boleyn in the afterlife but their happiness is, of course, constantly derailed by her obsession with Henry VIII (and the removal of her head at rather inopportune moments). One day McCord meets Dante's Beatrice, who believes there is a way out of Hell, and the next morning, during an exclusive on-camera interview with Satan, McCord realizes that Satan's omniscience, which he has always credited for the perfection of Hell's torments, may be a mirage—and Butler is off on a madcap romp about good, evil, free will, and the possibility of escape. Butler's depiction of Hell is original, intelligent, and fiercely comic, a book Dante might have celebrated.

"I'll never stop believing it: Robert Olen Butler is the best living American writer, period." —Jeff Guinn, Fort Worth Star-Telegram

About this title

Review

"I'll never stop believing it: Robert Olen Butler is the best living American writer, period." -- Jeff Guinn

"The number of novels and short-story collections about the Vietnam War is now approaching five hundred. Were I to recommend a single volume that poignantly shows the magnitude and the humanity of the tragedy, it would be this one." -- John Clark Pratt

"The book has attracted such acclaim not simply because it is beautifully and powerfully written, but because it convincingly pulls off an immense imaginative risk.... Butler has not entered the significant and ever-growing canon of Vietnam-related fiction (he has long been a member)--he has changed its composition forever." -- Claire Messud

"No writer in America today can be said to surpass Butler in the eating-his-cake-and-having-it-too category: He's literary and entertaining, serious and funny. Within his clear and fluent narratives, there usually nestles complexity, if you care to look for it." -- Chauncey Mabe

About the Author

Robert Olen Butler teaches creative writing at Florida State University.

Edition details

• Publisher: Grove Press / Atlantic Monthly Press
• Publication date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0802145094
• ISBN 13: 9780802145093
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 242