The Fortress of Solitude - Softcover

Jonathan Lethem

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0571219365 ISBN 13: 9780571219360

Publisher: Faber and Faber, 2004

Synopsis

A National Book Critics Circle Award-winning Author

The award-winning author of Motherless Brooklyn spins a tale of two friends from a Brooklyn neighborhood, a black boy and a white boy, and their adventures in late-twentieth-century America. It is the story of the 1970s, when the simplest human decisions were laden with potential political, social, and racial disaster. And it's the story of the 1990s, when nobody cared anymore.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

“Lethem has done a number of things here, any one of which is impossible for any but the very finest novelists. He has vividly and lovingly and truthfully, through thrilling evocation of its music, its popular culture, its street games, argot, pharmacology, social mores and racial politics, recreated a world, a moment in history that I would have thought lost and irrecoverable. He has created, in young Dylan, a genuine literary hero. He has reinvented and reinvigorated the myths of the superhero, of black-white relations, of New York City itself.  But most of all, from my point of view, he captures precisely–as only a great novelist can–how it feels to love the world that is, on a daily basis, kicking your ass.”
--Michael Chabon, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay and Wonder Boys


“THE FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE is luminous, stinging with truth and life. A story of two boys, a Brooklyn story, an American story that gives in its very specificity the force of the universal.”
--Paula Fox, author of Desperate Characters and Borrowed Finery
"Wondrous and sweeping, this story evokes perfectly the nuances of friendship and the often odd arrangement called family. The drum of loss beats poignantly beneath the surface, as this tale moves from the streets of Brooklyn to the West Coast and back, presenting us the with baffling and tender gift of acceptance."
--Elizabeth Strout, author of Amy and Isabelle

"The Fortress of Solitude is a grim, brave, soaring American masterpiece."
--Richard Russo

From the Inside Flap:

This is the story of two boys, Dylan Ebdus and Mingus Rude. They are friends and neighbors, but because Dylan is white and Mingus is black, their friendship is not simple. This is the story of their Brooklyn neighborhood, which is almost exclusively black despite the first whispers of something that will become known as "gentrification."

This is the story of 1970s America, a time when the most simple human decisions?what music you listen to, whether to speak to the kid in the seat next to you, whether to give up your lunch money?are laden with potential political, social and racial disaster. This is the story of 1990s America, when no one cared anymore.

This is the story of punk, that easy white rebellion, and crack, that monstrous plague. This is the story of the loneliness of the avant-garde artist and the exuberance of the graffiti artist.

This is the story of what would happen if two teenaged boys obsessed with comic book heroes actually had superpowers: They would screw up their lives.

This is the story of joyous afternoons of stickball and dreaded years of schoolyard extortion. This is the story of belonging to a society that doesn't accept you. This is the story of prison and of college, of Brooklyn and Berkeley, of soul and rap, of murder and redemption.

This is the story Jonathan Lethem was born to tell. This is THE FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE.

About this edition

• Publisher: Faber and Faber
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0571219365
• ISBN 13: 9780571219360
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 582