Ethan Canin

After a lonely childhood in the woods of northern Michigan in the 1950s, it is not until Milo Andret goes to U.C. Berkeley as a graduate student that his professors realise what a prodigiously gifted and unusual mind he has. Yet with these gifts come risks, and California in the seventies is rife with temptation, opening Milo's eyes to the allure of both ambition and indulgence. The research he begins there will make him a legend; the woman and the rival he meets there will haunt him forever. It soon becomes clear that Milo's brilliance is inextricably linked to a dark side, and it is this duality that ultimately threatens to unravel his work, his family, and his life. It is a duality that his son, Hans, inherits and one which he must conquer if he is to avoid the fate of his father. A Doubter's Almanac is at once a captivatingly virtuoso illustration of the powers of the mind and a deeply moving exploration of the nature of love, ambition and genius. It is a novel of flawed characters and frustrated dreams; of the bonds that tie and the passions that destroy.

From the author of The Palace Thief and Carry Across the Water comes a stunning novel, set in the Nixon era and today, about a great family, a political tragedy, and the impact of fate on history, an

The flame of genius scorches every generation it touches. Following a lonely upbringing in the woods of northern Michigan, Milo Andret enrols as a graduate student at U.C. Berkeley, where the faculty is the first to recognize that the young man's childhood solitude has created a prodigiously unusual mind. Yet with Milo's great gifts come great risks, and California in the seventies is rife with temptation. The research he begins at Berkeley will make him a legend; the woman, and the rival he meets, will haunt him forever. For it soon becomes clear that Milo's brilliance is linked to a dark need that ultimately threatens to destroy not only his work and his marriage, but the lives of all his children, as well. A Doubter's Almanac is at once a captivatingly virtuoso illustration of the powers of the mind and a deeply moving exploration of the nature of love, ambition and genius. It is a novel of flawed characters and unreachable dreams, of bonds that tie and passions that destroy; a major work of dazzling and seductive beauty from one of our foremost writers

The theme of the book is the nature of genius. A doctor, near the end of the novel, delivers an interesting interpretation as to why so many math geniuses flirt with paranoia and madness. He calls it "God's revenge" because such people comprehend the nature of the universe in a way that the rest of us ordinary folk simply cannot comprehend. They get too close to God. But the other great theme of the book is how human feeling and compassion can coexist with such brilliance and can ultimate win out. Hans is not perfect -- and Milo is a very difficult, self-destructive persona -- but there is a reconciliation that happens that provides a true human heart to this absorbing novel.

It is the early 1970s; Nixon is in the White House and Corey Sifter, the young son of working class parents, is befriended by the powerful Metarey family, whose patriarch is a kingmaker in the world of New York state politics. Corey becomes a yard-boy on the Metarey''s grand estate, and soon, through the family''s generosity, a student at a private boarding school. Before long, he is a confidant of the Metareys and an aide to the great New York Senator Henry Bonwiller as he runs for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States.Wary as Corey is, he soon finds himself involved with one of the enigmatic Metarey daughters. As the Bonwiller Presidential campaign gains momentum, a crime is committed, and Corey is forced to reconcile his part in a complex tangle of morality, politics, gratitude, love and loyalty. America America is a magnificent novel about ambition and family, politics and crime, sex and love, small town life and big time power, by a celebrated American writer. How vanity, greatness and tragedy combine to change history and fate is at the heart of Ethan Canin''s remarkable America America.

Un libro de relatos deslumbrante. Historias sutiles, precisas y con un humor entre compasivo e irónico. Lejos de modas efímeras, y sin invocar ninguna de las contraseñas de la modernidad, Ethan Canin es considerado uno de los mas notables escritores jovenes norteamericanos. Cuatro extensos relatos integran El ladron de palacio, sobre los que se proyecta la sombra fecunda de Chejov, santo patron de los cuentistas, que al igual que Canin tambien era medico. Son narraciones precisas, sutiles, con un impecable tiempo dramatico, un humor entre compasivo e ironico y esas fugaces iluminaciones que para Chejov constituian el fundamento del arte de narrar.En El contable un hombre que alguna vez quiso ser historiador de la musica, pero eligio la contabilidad, esa mision de exactitud y escrupulosidad, cometera un delito, impulsado por sus secretos deseos de desorden y caos. En Batorsag y Szerelem, el tragicomico descubrimiento de una impostura, un adolescente vive fascinado por su brillante y excentrico hermano mayor, hippie rebelde, matematico y musico, e inventor de un lenguaje secreto. Wilson, el protagonista de La ciudad de los corazones rotos, un solitario divorciado, debe aprender de nuevo a vivir, y en una curiosa vuelta de tuerca, su hijo sera el maestro y mentor. Y en El ladron de palacio Hundert, un profesor de historia de un exclusivo colegio privado, se ve arrastrado a una peculiar contienda con un alumno, el mentiroso hijo de un poderoso senador...

'Masterful...a classic parable of the human condition,' said Publishers Weekly about Ethan Canin's For Kings and Planets, and the same can be said about Canin's brilliant new novel, Carry me Across the Water Breathtaking in its suspense and beauty, Carry me Across the Water tells the story of a man and his family who forge their lives against the backdrop of World War II and the central years of the twentieth century. 'Take the advice of no one,' the young August Kleinman is told by his mother as around them in Hamburg, Germany, the Nazi party rises to power; and with these words to guide him, young August escapes to America, where he goes on to build a fortune, a family, and a life on his own daring terms. At the defining moments that reveal character and shape fate, August's bold journey illuminates, at the deepest levels, how our lives unfold. A shocking encounter with a Japanese soldier in a cave during World War II, an audacious decision to start a long-shot business in America, a lifelong passion for an Italian girl named Ginger, estrangement from his modern children, violence, and finally, atonement for the sins of his life.

Reconocido unánimemente como uno de los autores que marcan el canon de la narrativa contemporánea norteamericana, Ethan Canin ha escrito otra obra de gran belleza y complejidad psicológica que no defraudara a quienes admiraron Blue River y El emperador del aire. Procedente de un pequeño pueblo de Misuri, Orno Tarcher llega a Nueva York para ingresar en la Universidad de Columbia. Lastrado por los rigurosos valores que su familia le ha inculcado, pronto empezara a sentirse incapaz de estar a la altura de la sofisticacion que se exhibe a su alrededor, especialmente al trabar amistad con Marshall Emerson, seductor y brillante joven neoyorquino. Sin embargo, a pesar de las oportunidades que su rango social le otorga, Marshall vive acuciado por la influencia de su padre e ira derivando cada vez mas hacia su propia destruccion y la de todo cuanto le rodea. Ethan Canin explora en profundidad todos los vericuetos de la amistad, los conflictos internos en los que uno mismo se ve involucrado a diario, asi como el impulso de la ambicion opuesto a la inercia de una normalidad cotidiana exenta de todo riesgo. De reyes y planetas es ya otro clasico de la narrativa y confirma a Canin como un loable sucesor de Philip Roth, Elizabeth Bishop y Robert Penn Warren.

La inextricable relación entre el ayer y el hoy, entre la vida y la muerte, concentra todo el interés de August Kleinman. A sus setenta y ocho años, viudo, con tres hijos y muy rico, Kleinman rememora su vida intentando explicarse cómo un muchacho judío que huyó de la Alemania nazi ha llegado a ser quien es. No hay una sucesión cronológica en sus recuerdos, éstos surgen de forma desordenada y aleatoria, tal como funciona la memoria, creando un efecto asombroso y casi musical de simultaneidad con el presente del anciano. Su infancia, su precipitada huida de Alemania con su madre, su adolescencia en un barrio humilde de Nueva York, el amor, el trabajo, el trato con sus hijos, el lazo con su nieto recién nacido, su incómoda realción con el dinero, el nexo cuestionado y siempre presente con el judaismo; cada paso de su camino está ahí, pero lo que hace única su historia sucedió en una cueva de una isla del Pacífico, durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial.