Falconer

Description

The raw, rage-filled final novel from a master American storyteller Discover John Cheever's quirky psychological novel that is the perfect book club read. Ezekiel Farragut is a college professor, a drug-addict and a murderer. Locked in Falconer State Penitentiary, he struggles through tormenting visits from his wife, the burden of memory and guilt, and the brutal monotony of his surroundings to retain his humanity, eventually finding the possibility of redemption through an affair with a fellow prisoner. Considered by many to be Cheever's masterpiece, Falconer is a tour de force from one of America's greatest storytellers.

John Cheever was born in Quincy, Massachusetts, in 1912, and he went to school at Thayer Academy in South Braintree. He is the author of seven collections of stories and five novels. His first novel, The Wapshot Chronicle, won the 1958 National Book Award. In 1965 he received the Howells Medal for Fiction from the National Academy of Arts and Letters and in 1978 he won the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer prize. Shortly before his death in 1982 he was awarded the National Medal for Literature.

A whole swathe of poor and underprivileged America is evoked by one of the country's most rarified stylists -- James Wood One of the most important novels of our time.. Read it and be ennobled * New York Times * Splendid...it is rough, it is elegant, it is pure. It is also indispensable, if you earnestly desire to know what is happening to the human soul in the USA. -- Saul Bellow One of our truly fine writers...Moving and excellent * Washington Post *