In the Wolf's Mouth - Hardcover

Adam Foulds

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0224098284 ISBN 13: 9780224098281

Publisher: Jonathan Cape, 2014

Synopsis

In The Wolf's Mouth is a novel about war and the Mafia, about innocence and corruption, and history as an accumulation of the irrevocable. Set mostly in Sicily during the Second World War, it tells the story of an attempt to reconstruct a country after violent conflict through the eyes of several characters. Will Walker, an English Field Security Officer, attempts mastery of the great game of intelligence and intervention. Ray Marfione, an Italian-American infantryman, experiences the thought-shattering trauma of battle and slowly, in hiding, with the aid of a Sicilian Princess, attempts the long return to life. Cirņ Albanese is a Mafioso who has enjoyed a long, productive exile in New York during the years of Italian Fascism. He returns to reclaim his old life, including the wife who had thought him killed long ago. With friends released from prison and the unwitting aid of the Allies, he works to re-establish the Mafia's hold on Sicily.

Written in short chapters of great lyrical intensity, In the Wolf's Mouth collides the small and luminous details of individual experience with brutally massive historical forces. It observes the characters' attempts to find meaning in all of this, to tell stories to themselves that make sense. Numerous stories interlock and come apart in the novel which records, as fiercely as it can, the events of these lives without deciding what they mean or what they're worth.

About this title

About the Author

ADAM FOULDS was born in 1974, took a Creative Writing M.A. at the University of East Anglia, and now lives in South London. Foulds is the recipient of the 2008 Costa Poetry Award, for his book-length narrative poem, The Broken Word, as well as the 2008 Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award, the 2008 Somerset Maugham Award, The Southbank Show Award for Literature and a 2007 Betty Trask Award. His novel The Quickening Maze was shortlisted for the 2009 Man Booker Prize. And it was announced at the 2013 London Book Fair that he is included on Granta's annual list of Best Young British Novelists, alongside Zadie Smith, Steven Hall, Tahmima Anam and Ross Raisin.

Review

Praise for "The Quickening Maze

""It has been a while since I have read a book as richly sown with beauty . . . A remarkable work, remarkable for the precision and vitality of its perceptions and for the successful intricacy of its prose." --James Wood, "The New Yorker"

"Adam Foulds writes like an angel about devilish things . . . He is fearsomely unafraid of the darkness within humans and the darkness they are capable of creating around them. The supple, sensuous beauty of his prose is bewitching: like the helpless children of Hamelin we follow wherever he chooses to lead, however horrifying the terrain, enchanted by the unstoppable flow of rich, unforgettable images." --Rebecca Abrams, "Financial Times""Foulds acknowledged mastery as a novelist and as a poet . . . is often apparent in this book: in the ambiguous dialogues between strangers revealing unspoken intimacies, in the delicately clipped snippets of everyday life recalled in the confusion of war, in the lyrical broken-up sentences that mirror the physical and mental shattering of the ongoing slaughter." --Alberto Manguel, "The Guardian""Adam Foulds is a young British novelist of striking talent and eclecticism. His style is first-rate, combining precision with a rich poetic imagination. He is able to do more with language, and at greater depth, than most other British novelists of his generation." --Andrew Holgate, "The Sunday Times""On the level of the sentence, there's much to admire in this novel. Foulds has a searching eye for detail and an apparently helpless compulsion to wring imagery from his subject." --Tim Martin, "The Telegraph""Combining careful, considered prose with horrific realism, the latest from Foulds expertly renders the Allied campaigns in Italy and North Africa during WWII . . . readers will be amazed at this deeply felt, vivid novel." --"Publishers Weekly "(Pick of the Week)"Foulds writes like no one else; while individual scenes are rendered with poetic simplicity, they fit together into an elliptical, complex plot readers will puzzle over long after finishing this novel." --"Kirkus ""It's in these battle scenes where Foulds excels. The writer manages to combine the horrors and banalities of war in the same sentence. . . . Here, Foulds, a Costa awa

Praise for "In the Wolf's Mouth""Electric . . . Mr. Foulds powerfully achieves what Stephen Crane called the 'psychological portrayal of fear' . . . fiercely memorable fiction." --"The Wall Street Journal""In the hands of award-winning poet Foulds, this combat narrative promises to remind us, via the revitalizing power of great writing, what war really feels and looks like." --Daniel Lefferts, "Bookish.com""Prose that flashes like the bullets and explosions it evokes." --Laurie Greer, Politics and Prose"A harsh illumination of the broken mess that most war amounts to." --John Domini, "Bookforum""Combining careful, considered prose with horrific realism, the latest from Foulds expertly renders the Allied campaigns in Italy and North Africa during WWII." --"Publishers Weekly" (Pick of the Week)"Adam Foulds writes like an angel about devilish things . . . He is fearsomely unafraid of the darkness within humans and the darkness they are capable of creating around them. The supple, sensuous beauty of his prose is bewitching: like the helpless children of Hamelin we follow wherever he chooses to lead, however horrifying the terrain, enchanted by the unstoppable flow of rich, unforgettable images." --Rebecca Abrams, "Financial Times""Foulds acknowledged mastery as a novelist and as a poet . . . is often apparent in this book: in the ambiguous dialogues between strangers revealing unspoken intimacies, in the delicately clipped snippets of everyday life recalled in the confusion of war, in the lyrical broken-up sentences that mirror the physical and mental shattering of the ongoing slaughter." --Alberto Manguel, "The Guardian""Adam Foulds is a young British novelist of striking talent and eclecticism. His style is first-rate, combining precision with a rich poetic imagination. He is able to do more with language, and at greater depth, than most other British novelists of his generation." --Andrew Holgate, "The Sunday Times""On the level of the sentence, there's much to admir

About this edition

• Publisher: Jonathan Cape
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 0224098284
• ISBN 13: 9780224098281
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 336