The Two Faces of January - Softcover

Highsmith, Patricia

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0802122620 ISBN 13: 9780802122629

Publisher: Grove Press, 2014

Synopsis

“[A] classic psychological thriller.”—USA Today

Originally published in 1964, and the winner of the CWA Best Foreign Novel Award, Patricia Highsmith’s The Two Faces of January is a chilling tale of suspense, suffused with her trademark slow, creeping unease.

In a grubby Athens hotel, Rydal Keener is bored and killing time with petty scams. But when he runs into another American, Chester MacFarland, dragging a man’s body down the hotel hall, Rydan impulsively agrees to help, perhaps because Chester looks like his father. Then Rydal meets Collete, Chester’s younger wife, and captivated, becomes entangled in their sordid lives, as the drama marches to a shocking climax at the ruins of the labyrinth at Knossos.

A film version of The Two Faces of January, starring Viggo Mortensen, Kirsten Dunst, and Oscar Isaac (Drive, Inside Llewelyn Davis) is in production. Adapted by Academy Award nominee Hossein Amini (Drive), and produced by Working Title and Timnick Films (The Talented Mr. Ripley), it will be released later this fall.

“An offbeat, provocative and absorbing suspense novel.”—The New York Times

“Patricia Highsmith is one of the few suspense writers whose work transcends genre.”—The Austin American-Statesman

About this title

From the Back Cover

Three of them are waiting. Rydal Keener is waiting for something exciting to happen in his grubby little Athens hotel. At forty-odd, Chester MacFarland has been waiting much longer, expecting his life of stock manipulation and fraud to catch up with him. And Colette, Chester's wife, is waiting for something altogether different. After a nasty little incident in the hotel, they all wait together. As the stakes-and the tension-in their three-cornered waiting game mount, they learn that while passports and silence can be bought, other things can cost as much as your life.

"Shifts of ground stand metaphor for shifts in relationship; psychology is beautifully interleaved with a gritty genius loci."-Library Journal

"An offbeat, provocative and absorbing suspense novel."-Anthony Boucher, The New York Times

About the Author

Patricia Highsmith (1921-1995) was born in Fort Worth, Texas, and moved to New York when she was six, where she attended the Julia Richman High School and Barnard College. In her senior year she edited the college magazine, having decided at the age of sixteen to become a writer. Her first novel, Strangers on a Train, was made into a classic film by Alfred Hitchcock in 1951. The Talented Mr Ripley, published in 1955, introduced the fascinating anti-hero Tom Ripley, and was made into an Oscar-winning film in 1999 by Anthony Minghella. Graham Greene called Patricia Highsmith 'the poet of apprehension', saying that she 'created a world of her own - a world claustrophobic and irrational which we enter each time with a sense of personal danger' and The Times named her no.1 in their list of the greatest ever crime writers. Patricia Highsmith died in Locarno, Switzerland, in February 1995. Her last novel, Small g: A Summer Idyll, was published posthumously, the same year.

Edition details

• Publisher: Grove Press
• Publication date: 2014
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0802122620
• ISBN 13: 9780802122629
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288