THE ACTION of The Long Ships covers, approximately, the years 980-1010 of our era. At that time the southern provinces of Sweden belonged to Denmark, so that Orm, though born and bred in Skania, regarded himself as a Dane.1
The Vikings...
The Bigtree alligator wrestling dynasty is in decline — think Buddenbrooks set in the Florida Everglades — and Swamplandia! their island home and gator-wrestling theme park, is swiftly being encroached upon by a sophisticated competitor known as...
Either First Novel is a darkly funny examination of the relative attractions of creative writing courses and suburban dogging sites, or it's a twisted campus novel and possible murder mystery that's not afraid to blend fact with fiction in its...
The cult hit The Interrogative Mood — a Best Book of the Year selection by Amazon.com, GQ, The Believer, Time Out New York, and elsewhere — reminded readers that Padgett Powell is one of the enduring stars of American fiction, an...
At her kitchen table somewhere in the South, Padgett Powell's narrator embarks on a spirited and often hilarious imagining of certain historical figures and current national preoccupations. Ostensibly writing her grocery list, Mrs. Hollingsworth...
Twenty-three surreal fictions-stories, character assassinations, and mini-travelogues-from one of the most heralded writers of the American South There are many things that repulse "Dr. Ordinary." "Kansas" is notable for its distinct lack of...
Hailed by Time as an "extravagantly comic" novel, A Woman Named Drown is a wild and strange journey through America's South that follows a young PhD dropout who falls in with an amateur actress-cum-pool shark On the brink of earning his doctorate...
Paul and Elaine have two boys and a beautiful home, yet they find themselves thoroughly, inexplicably stuck. Obsessed with 'making things good again', they spin the quiet terrors of family life into a fantastical frenzy that careens well and...
This title introduces Karl Oskar and Kristina Nilsson, their 3 young children, and 11 others who make up a resolute party of Swedes fleeing the poverty, religious persecution, and social oppression of Smaland in...
Considered one of Sweden's greatest 20th-century writers, Vilhelm Moberg created Karl Oskar and Kristina Nilsson to portray the joys and tragedies of daily life for early Swedish pioneers in America. His consistently faithful depiction of these...