The_Sorrows_of_an_American
2010 Nominated

The Sorrows of an American

artwork-image

ABOUT
THE BOOK

After their father’s funeral, Erik and Inga Davidsen find a cryptic letter from an unknown woman among his papers, dating from his adolescence in rural Minnesota during the Depression. Returning to his psychiatric practice in New York, Erik sets about reading his father’s memoir, hoping to discover the man he never fully understood.
At the same time, another woman enters Erik’s lonely, divorced life – a beautiful Jamaican who moves into his garden flat with her small daughter. As Erik gets drawn into the cat-and-mouse tactics of someone who appears to be stalking her, he finds out that his sister Inga is also being threatened, by a journalist in possession of a wounding secret from her past.

ABOUT
THE AUTHOR Siri
Hustvedt

Siri Hustvedt’s first novel, The Blindfold, was published by Sceptre in 1993 and her second, The Enchantment of Lily Dahl, followed in 1997. Both were highly acclaimed and translated around the world, while part of The Blindfold was made into a film (Of Women and Magic, directed by Claude Miller). Her third novel, What I Loved, was published in 2003 to even greater acclaim and has been an international success; her next novel, The Sorrows of an American, followed in 2008. Her work has been published in The Paris Review, Fiction, and The Best American Short Stories, and she is also the author of Reading to You, a poetry collection, and three collections of essays, Yonder, Mysteries of the Rectangle: Essays on Painting, and A Plea for Eros, and a non-fiction work, The Shaking Woman: A History of My Nerves.  She lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her husband, Paul Auster.

Siri Hustvedt’s first novel, The Blindfold, was published by Sceptre in 1993 and her second, The Enchantment of Lily Dahl, followed in 1997. Both were highly acclaimed and translated around the world, while part of The Blindfold was made into a film (Of Women and Magic, directed by Claude Miller). Her third novel, What I Loved, was published in 2003 to even greater acclaim and has been an international success; her next novel, The Sorrows of an American, followed in 2008. Her work has been published in The Paris Review, Fiction, and The Best American Short Stories, and she is also the author of Reading to You, a poetry collection, and three collections of essays, Yonder, Mysteries of the Rectangle: Essays on Painting, and A Plea for Eros, and a non-fiction work, The Shaking Woman: A History of My Nerves.  She lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her husband, Paul Auster.

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NOMINATING LIBRARY COMMENTS

The narrator is grieving for his deceased father, who seems to have kept a secret. A novel about family, loss, grief, art and the immigrant experience which revels the frailties of the human mind.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Country
United States
Original Language
English
Author
Publisher
Sceptre, Henry Holt & Company

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