The Instructions - Hardcover

Levin, Adam

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1934781827 ISBN 13: 9781934781821

Publisher: McSweeney's Publishing, 2010

Synopsis

A Joyce Carol Oates Fiction Prize-winning writer presents the story of 10-year-old Gurion Maccabee, who throughout the course of four days is ejected from his latest Jewish day-school for acts of terrorist violence and messianic tendencies and launches the start of a revolution inside of a lockdown institution.

About this title

Review

"Evocative of David Foster Wallace... full of death-defying sentences, manic wit, exciting provocations and simple human warmth."
--Julia Holmes, "Rolling Stone"
"[A] riotous, gigantic and disturbing debut novel... Levin has filled his pages with modern Poloniuses, masters of digression, and with moments rich in fact and feeling."
--Abigail Deutsch, "San Francisco Chronicle"
"A hysterical, heartfelt journey of self-discovery... A book that moves beyond completely transparent influences to reach its own distinct, new, great height."
--Foster Kamer, "Village Voice"
"This is a life-consuming novel, one that demands to be read feverishly. When it is over, other fiction feels insufficient, the newspaper seems irrelevant.... If the ultimate message of modernism was unremitting pessimism... "The Instructions" has given the literary genre its long deferred conclusion: Indeed, a day--or four--can serve as a reminder that death looms large for anything living, but there is lot of life to be lived in the interim."
--Michael H. Miller, "New York Observer"
""The Instructions" is addictively quotable, violently funny, insanely intelligent and utterly compelling. Levin's debut novel is unlike anything I've ever read, in the best possible way."
--Jill Owens, "The Oregonian"
"One of the 21st century's finest literary creations.... From every angle, "The Instructions" fairly screams 'Great American Novel, ' a work of fiction not to be trifled with, an amalgam of a young man's life, thoughts and feelings, culled and stacked and printed to be consumed in miserly dribbles."
--Preston Jones, "Fort-Worth Star-Telegram"
"After "The Instructions" challenges, charms and betrays you, it might just seduce your soul.... "The Instructions" is disturbing and romantic and ultimately, heartbreaking, and its questions are not easily parsed, even by Gurion's analytic mind. They are the nagging doubts of our own goodness and faith. But it's worth sticking with this author's debut: This is a wunderkind's master class.... An incredible creation of fiction."
--Katie Moulton, "St. Louis Post-Dispatch"
"A megapage masterpiece."
--Geoffrey Johnson, "Chicago" magazine
"Levin's mammoth, riotous, Talmudic, impossibly excessive yet brilliant, mesmerizing, warmhearted, and hilarious work of chutzpah takes place over four feverish days but encompasses the whole of Israel's battle for existence and the Jewish quest for home and peace."
--Donna Seaman, "Booklist"
""The Instructions" is in fact a vital work of--no getting around it--American Jewish literature because it imagines that the genre is indeed through and asks what can be written in its place."
--Marissa Brostoff, "Tablet" magazine
"Manic energy, ambition, erudition, interpolation of documents and sheer bulk."
--Elaine Rewolinski, "Milwaukee Journal Sentinel"
"One of the year's most engrossing novels.... His voice will haunt you long after you close the book."
--"Largehearted Boy"

Book Description

The extraordinary story of a very different kind of leader...

Edition details

• Publisher: McSweeney's Publishing
• Publication date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1934781827
• ISBN 13: 9781934781821
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 1030