The Book Of Daniel - Softcover

E.L. Doctorow

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0330237624 ISBN 13: 9780330237628

Publisher: Picador, 1973

Synopsis

The central figure of this novel is a young man whose parents were executed for conspiring to steal atomic secrets for Russia. His name is Daniel Isaacson. As the story opens his parents have been dead for years. He's had a long time to adjust to their deaths. He hasn't adjusted. Out of the shambles of his childhood, he's constructed a new life--marriage to an adoring girl, a son & a career in scholarship. It's a life that enrages him. In the silence of the library at Columbia University, where he's supposedly writing a dissertation, Daniel composes something different. It's a confession of his most intimate relationships--with his wife, his foster parents & his kid sister Susan, whose own radicalism reproaches him. It's a book of memories: riding a bus with his parents to the ill-fated Paul Robeson concert in Peekskill; watching the FBI take his father away; appearing with Susan at rallies protesting their parents' innocence; visiting them in the Death House. It's a book of investigation: transcribing Daniel's interviews with people who knew his parents, or who knew about them; & logging his strange researches & discoveries in the library stacks. It's a book of judgments of everyone involved in the case--lawyers, police, informers, friends & the Isaacson family itself. It's a book rich in characters, from elderly grandmothers of immigrant culture, to covert radicals of the McCarthy era, to hippie marchers on the Pentagon. It's a book that spans the quarter-century of American life since WWII. It's a book about the nature of Left politics in this country's sacrificial rites, its peculiar cruelties, its humility, its bitterness. It's a book about some of the beautiful & terrible feelings of childhood. It's about the nature of guilt & innocence, about the relations of people to nations. It's The Book of Daniel.

About this title

About the Author

E. L. DOCTOROW was born in 1931 in New York City and was educated at Kenyon College and Columbia University. His earlier novels are Welcome to Hard Times and Big as Life. Formerly editor-in-chief of a prominent New York publishing house, he was most recently writer-in-residence at the University of California at Irvine. He lives in Westchester County with his wife and three children.

Review

“A ferocious feat of the imagination . . . Every scene is perfectly realized and feeds into the whole–the themes and symbols echoing and reverberating.”
–Newsweek

“A nearly perfect work of art, and art on this level can only be a cause for rejoicing.”
–Joyce Carol Oates

“This is an extraordinary contemporary novel, a stunning work.”
–San Francisco Chronicle

“The political novel of our age . . . the best work of its kind.”
–New Republic

“Remarkable . . . One of the finest works of fiction.”
–Minneapolis Star Tribune

“Stirring, brilliant, very moving.”
–Houston Post

Edition details

• Publisher: Picador
• Publication date: 1973
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0330237624
• ISBN 13: 9780330237628
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 309