Your Fathers, Where Are They And the Prophets, Do They Live Forever - Hardcover

Dave Eggers

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0241146917 ISBN 13: 9780241146910

Publisher: Hamish Hamilton, 2014

Synopsis

From Dave Eggers, best-selling author of The Circle, a tightly controlled, emotionally searching novel. Your Fathers, Where Are They? And the Prophets, Do They Live Forever? is the formally daring, brilliantly executed story of one man struggling to make sense of his country, seeking answers the only way he knows how.

In a barracks on an abandoned military base, miles from the nearest road, Thomas watches as the man he has brought wakes up. Kev, a NASA astronaut, doesn't recognize his captor, though Thomas remembers him. Kev cries for help. He pulls at his chain. But the ocean is close by, and nobody can hear him over the waves and wind. Thomas apologizes. He didn't want to have to resort to this. But they really needed to have a conversation, and Kev didn't answer his messages. And now, if Kev can just stop yelling, Thomas has a few questions

About this title

About the Author

Dave Eggers grew up near Chicago and graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is the founder of McSweeney's, an independent publishing house in San Francisco that produces books, a quarterly journal of new writing (McSweeney's Quarterly Concern), and a monthly magazine, The Believer. McSweeney's publishes Voice of Witness, a nonprofit book series that uses oral history to illuminate human rights crises around the world. In 2002, he cofounded 826 Valencia, a nonprofit youth writing and tutoring center in San Francisco's Mission District. Sister centers have since opened in seven other American cities under the umbrella of 826 National, and like-minded centers have opened in Dublin, London, Copenhagen, Stockholm, and Birmingham, Alabama, among other locations. His work has been nominated for the National Book Award, the Pulitzer Prize, and the National Book Critics Circle Award, and has won the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, France's Prix Médicis, Germany's Albatross Prize, the National Magazine Award, and the American Book Award. Eggers lives in Northern California with his family.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

BUILDING 52
 
—I did it. You’re really here. An astronaut. Jesus.
 
—Who’s that?
 
—You probably have a headache. From the chloroform.
 
—What? Where am I? Where is this place? Who the fuck are you?
 
—You don’t recognize me?
 
—What? No. What is this?
 
—That? It’s a chain. It’s attached to that post. Don’t pull on it.
 
—Holy shit. Holy shit.
 
—I said don’t pull on it. And I have to tell you right away how sorry I am that you’re here under these circumstances.
 
—Who are you?
 
—We know each other, Kev. From way back. And I didn’t want to bring you here like this. I mean, I’d rather just grab a beer with you sometime, but you didn’t answer any of my letters and then I saw you were coming through town so— Really, don’t yank on that. You’ll mess up your leg.
 
—Why the fuck am I here?
 
—You’re here because I brought you here.
 
—You did this? You have me chained to a post?
 
—Isn’t that thing great? I don’t know if you’d call it a post. Whatever it is, it’s incredibly strong. This place came with them. This was a military base...

Edition details

• Publisher: Hamish Hamilton
• Publication date: 2014
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0241146917
• ISBN 13: 9780241146910
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 212