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Synopsis
[Read by Peter Powlus]
A powerful and elegant debut novel about love, memory, exile, and war.
One snowy holiday morning in an old European city, an American man leaves his shabby hotel to meet a local woman who has agreed to help him search for an apartment to rent. This clear-eyed novel tells the intriguing story of these two people on this single day. -- Told in an affecting and intimate tone that gradually expands in scope, intensity, poetry, and drama, The Apartment follows the couple across a blurry, illogical, and frozen city into a past the man is hoping to forget and leaves them at the doorstep of an uncertain future. -- A complex meditation on America's relationship with the rest of the world as well as an unflinching glimpse at the permanence of human guilt and despair and humankind's lust to cure violence with violence, The Apartment is also, and above all, a novel about the bravery and mystery of friendship and love.
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Review
An Amazon Best Book of the Month, December 2013: At times meandering, but also but weirdly captivating, this debut novel follows an unnamed man shambling through the snowy streets of an unnamed Eastern European city (Prague?)--an ancient place where “intense joy and intense sorrow are extinct”--on a freezing-cold day as he and his not-quite-girlfriend search for an apartment. That’s basically it. And while it never quite launches, the defiantly moody and sullen tone has admirable charms. I felt I should’ve been wearing a scarf while reading. And smoking. And drinking. Eventually we learn bits of backstory: the man is an Iraq war vet who later returned to Baghdad and made a fortune. His apparent guilt, and the unspoken horrors he seems to have witnessed (or perpetrated?) give the book its emotional heft. Quirky, poetic, and flaunting some truly stunning moments, this is a book to give into, and a writer to watch. --Neal Thompson
About the Author
GREG BAXTER was born and raised in Texas. Over the last twenty years he has lived variously in Ireland, England, Austria, Chicago, Louisiana, and Germany. In 2010 he published his first book, the critically acclaimed A Preparation for Death. He now lives in Berlin, where he writes and translates.
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- PublisherUlverscroft
- Publication date2014
- ISBN 10 1444821806
- ISBN 13 9781444821802
- BindingPaperback
- Number of pages232
- Rating
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The Apartment
Seller: Goldstone Books, Llandybie, United Kingdom
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paperback. Condition: Good. Ex-Library Book. Has usual library markings and stamps inside. All orders are dispatched within one working day from our UK warehouse. We've been selling books online since 2004! We have over 750,000 books in stock. No quibble refund if not completely satisfied. Seller Inventory # mon0006808698
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