New Book
For the first time in one volume, three modern masterworks from the National Book Award-winning writer who has been called the American Graham Greene. Blurring the boundaries between literary fiction and political and military thrillers, Robert Stone was one of the most dynamic and critically acclaimed American writers of the last fifty years. Here, released in conjunction with Madison Smartt Bell’s major new biography, is a deluxe edition gathering Stone’s three finest novels, modern masterpieces about the dark underside of the American century. Stone’s own experiences in Saigon inspired Dog Soldiers (1974), in which an ill-fated scheme to smuggle three kilos of heroin from South Vietnam to California comes to the attention of a corrupt drug enforcement official, setting in motion a lethal chase across a nightmarish landscape populated by poseurs, hustlers, psychopathic criminals, and failed gurus. Winner of the National Book Award, Dog Soldiers ranks with the work of Michael Herr and Tim O’Brien as a psychological reckoning with how Vietnam changed America. A Flag for Sunrise (1981) depicts of a leftist revolution in the fictious Central American country of Tecan and its impact on three North Americans: Justin Feeney, an idealistic nun; Frank Holliwell, an anthropologist who does favors for the CIA; and Pablo Tabor, an enraged Coast Guard deserter. Through their fates Stone explores the search for moral order in a terrifying universe beset by fear and evil. In Outerbridge Reach (1992) Owen Browne, a Navy veteran of Vietnam turned boat salesman, seeks to test his courage amid the materialism, corruption, and superficiality of 1980s America by entering a solo around-the-world yacht race. Alone in the South Atlantic, Browne discovers his capacity for deception and enlightenment in a sea tale worthy of Melville and Conrad.
About the Author: Robert Stone was born in Brooklyn, New York to a “family of Scottish Presbyterians and Irish Catholics who made their living as tugboat workers in New York harbor”.[13] Until the age of six he was raised by his mother, who suffered from schizophrenia; after she was institutionalized, he spent several years in a Catholic orphanage. Although he never completed an academic degree, Stone taught in the creative writing programs at various university programs around the United States. He held a lectureship at the Johns Hopkins University Writing Seminars during the 1993–1994 academic year before moving to Yale University. He taught creative writing for the academic year 2006–2007 at Beloit College. According to his literary agent, Neil Olson,[21] Stone died from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease on January 10, 2015 in Key West,[22] where he and his wife had spent their winters for more than twenty years. He was 77.[23] At the time of his death, Stone was survived by his wife (of 55 years) Janice and their two (adult-age) children[24] daughter Deirdre and son Ian.
