Louse (Signed First Edition)

David Grand

ISBN 10: 1559704497 / ISBN 13: 9781559704496

Published by Arcade, 1998

About this Item

New York: Arcade (1998). First edition. First printing. Hardbound. New/New. A pristine unread copy (without marks or bruises or smells or any other defect). Comes with acid-free, archival-quality mylar dust jacket cover (not clipped, of course). Shipped in well-padded box. Smoke-free, smell-free. Purchased new and opened only for author to sign, no inscriptions, just the author's name. SIGNED BY AUTHOR on title page and dated by him in March 2014, during his author tour for MOUNT TERMINUS. You cannot find a better copy. Author's first book. 0.0. Seller Inventory # 8578

Bibliographic Details

Title: Louse (Signed First Edition)

Publisher: Arcade

Publication Date: 1998

Binding: Hardcover

Condition: New

Dust Jacket Condition: New

Signed: Signed by Author(s)

Edition: 1st Edition.

About this title

Synopsis:

The valet and reluctant confidant to a Howard Hughes-like tycoon, Herman Louse discovers that his compulsive employer's carefully constructed environment is threatened by a conspiracy that may end in his freedom. A first novel.

Review:

What if Howard Hughes ruled his corporate empire from a chrome-and-glass citadel, served by problem gamblers who've been enslaved so they can pay off their debts? Louse is only partly the answer to that question. It's also a deft piece of corporate satire, an Orwellian fable about absolute power, even a kind of religious allegory. Author David Grand's remarkable first novel follows Herman Q. Louse, valet to the invalid, germ-phobic billionaire Herbert Horatio Blackwell, as he navigates the conspiracy-ridden world Blackwell has constructed in the middle of the Nevada desert. Louse's story is interspersed with snippets of memos, bulletins, press releases, and public confessions--Grand's modern version of groupthink--all of which provide a darkly comic counterpoint to the novel's growing intrigue. There are more twists and turns in this book than in your average Hollywood thriller, yet somehow the plot--as well-oiled as it is--becomes hardly the point. Louse is a chilling look at the fate of the individual in a collectivized world, as appropriate to today's corporate drones as to the denizens of Orwell's 1984.