House of Sand and Fog (Oprah's Book Club) - Softcover

Andre Dubus

Softcover

ISBN 10: 009928314X ISBN 13: 9780099283140

Publisher: Vintage, 2001

Synopsis

The stage Is set for a gut-wrenching tragedy, which keeps the reader gripped and moved to the last page. Dubus has an extraordinary ability to get us inside each of his characters; to see the world as it is for each of them. These are ordinary people, people just looking for a small piece of ground to stand on. Driven by the same ordinary needs into Iievitable conflict, a conflict in which even the reader, rooting for all of them, has no safe haven. Unfolding relentlessly from its opening pages, House Of Sand And Fog is a narrative triumph. It turns both the traditional immigrant success story and a modern love story upside down with a heartrending outcome. The Oprah Book Club selection for November 2000.

About this title

Review:

Oprah Book Club® Selection, November 2000: Andre Dubus III wastes no time in capturing the dark side of the immigrant experience in America at the end of the 20th century. House of Sand and Fog opens with a highway crew composed of several nationalities picking up litter on a hot California summer day. Massoud Amir Behrani, a former colonel in the Iranian military under the Shah, reflects on his job-search efforts since arriving in the U.S. four years before: "I have spent hundreds of dollars copying my credentials; I have worn my French suits and my Italian shoes to hand-deliver my qualifications; I have waited and then called back after the correct waiting time; but there is nothing." The father of two, Behrani has spent most of the money he brought with him from Iran on an apartment and furnishings that are too expensive, desperately trying to keep up appearances in order to enhance his daughter's chances of making a good marriage. Now the daughter is married, and on impulse he sinks his remaining funds into a house he buys at auction, thus unwittingly putting himself and his family on a trajectory to disaster. The house, it seems, once belonged to Kathy Nicolo, a self-destructive alcoholic who wants it back. What starts out as a legal tussle soon escalates into a personal confrontation--with dire results.

Dubus tells his tragic tale from the viewpoints of the two main adversaries, Behrani and Kathy. To both of them, the house represents something more than just a place to live. For the colonel, it is a foot in the door of the American dream; for Kathy, a reminder of a kinder, gentler past. In prose that is simple yet evocative, House of Sand and Fog builds to its inevitable denouement, one that is painfully dark but unfailingly honest. --Alix Wilber

From the Publisher:

House of Sand and Fog has been named a finalist for the 1999 National Book Award in Fiction.

About this edition

• Publisher: Vintage
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 009928314X
• ISBN 13: 9780099283140
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 368