Absolution - Hardcover

Patrick Flanery

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0857892002 ISBN 13: 9780857892003

Publisher: Atlantic, 2012

Synopsis

A bold and exciting literary novel that contemplates the elusive line between truth and self-perception.



Ambitious and assured, Absolution propels the reader to the final page in a drive to discover the secrets and truths at its core. How or why did a young antiapartheid activist disappear twenty years earlier? How does that event link the present-day characters? And how does it explain the choices they have made or the lies they may tell themselves?



Set in contemporary South Africa, Absolution is a big-idea novel about the pitfalls of memory, the ramifications of censorship, and the ways we are silently complicit in the problems around us. It’s also a devastating, intimate, and stunningly woven story. Told in shifting perspectives, it centers on the mysterious character of Clare Wald, a controversial writer of great fame, haunted by the memories of a sister she fears she betrayed to her death and a daughter she fears she abandoned. Clare comes to learn that in this conflict the dead do not stay buried, and the missing return in other forms—such as the child witness of her daughter’s last days who has reappeared twenty years later as Clare’s official biographer, prompting an unraveling of history and a search for forgiveness. Patrick Flanery is an exhilarating new writer, and this is a masterpiece of rich, complicated characters and narration that captures the reader and does not let go.

About this title

About the Author

Patrick Flanery was born in California in 1975 and raised in Omaha, Nebraska. After earning a BFA in Film from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts he worked for three years in the film industry before moving to the UK, where he completed a doctorate in Twentieth-Century English Literature at the University of Oxford. As well as publishing scholarly articles on British and South African literature and film in a number of academic journals, he has written for Slightly Foxed and The Times Literary Supplement. He lives in London.

Review

The wonder of this outstanding novel is that Flanery weaves the stories together with such assurance and craftsmanship, digging underneath many recieved ideas about the old and new South Africa. * The Times * Gripping... The prose surges with enjoyable debate about the slipperiness of truth, the nature of forgiveness... Impressive * Sunday Telegraph * Compelling... At times, Flanery's prose evokes Graham Greene... A literary thriller whose writing is consistently first class. * Observer * A taut literary thriller set in South Africa... A very clever, beautifully written book where the reader is constantly adjusting to noting being as it seems. * Daily Mail * Flanery's portrayal of South Africa is explosively powerful... An exceptionally intelligent, multi-layered novel encompassing politics, history, a gripping storyline and complex characters. It has absorbing depictions of grief, guilt, parenthood and sibling rivalry, and is beautifully written... Absolution is an exceptional book. * Independent * Patrick Flanery is an exceptionally gifted novelist, and he is just getting started -- Philip Gourevitch * New Yorker *

Edition details

• Publisher: Atlantic
• Publication date: 2012
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0857892002
• ISBN 13: 9780857892003
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 400