Hope: A Tragedy - Hardcover

Auslander, Shalom

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 159448838X ISBN 13: 9781594488382

Publisher: Riverhead Books, 2012

Synopsis

A New York Times Notable Book 2012

The rural town of Stockton, New York, is famous for nothing: no one was born there, no one died there, nothing of any historical import at all has ever happened there, which is why Solomon Kugel, like other urbanites fleeing their pasts and histories, decided to move his wife and young son there.

To begin again. To start anew. But it isn’t quite working out that way for Kugel?

His ailing mother stubbornly holds on to life, and won’t stop reminiscing about the Nazi concentration camps she never actually suffered through. To complicate matters further, some lunatic is burning down farmhouses just like the one Kugel bought, and when, one night, he discovers history?a living, breathing, thought-to-be-dead specimen of history?hiding upstairs in his attic, bad quickly becomes worse.

Hope: A Tragedy is a hilarious and haunting examination of the burdens and abuse of history, propelled with unstoppable rhythm and filled with existential musings and mordant wit. It is a comic and compelling story of the hopeless longing to be free of those pasts that haunt our every present.

About this title

Review:

‘I think it’s a brilliant book, I think it’s as good as Portnoy’s Complaint’ David Baddiel, Open Book, BBC Radio 4

‘One of the best books I read last year. It’s hilarious . . . I think we should all read it.’ Naomi Alderman, Open Book, BBC Radio 4

Book Description:

Blackly hilarious, dangerously subversive, extraordinarily bold – this is liable to be the most controversial novel of the year

About this edition

• Publisher: Riverhead Books
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 159448838X
• ISBN 13: 9781594488382
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 292