Detailed item info | Synopsis | Tom Wolfe's novel stars a college football star turned millionaire businessman who, in late middle age, finds himself with a troublesome young wife and a mountain of debt. The cast includes Conrad Hensley, who gets in trouble with the law after losing his job; a black ex-athlete accused of raping a white girl; and the lawyer who represents him. This explosive, multihued novel about the tension in late 20th-century Atlanta involves illegal immigrants, prison life, shady real estate deals, trophy wives and the women they have replaced. Wolfe's first novel in 11 years was a finalist for the 1998 National Book Award. A New York Times Notable Book for 1998.
| | Size | | Length: | 742 pages | | Height: | 9.8 in. | | Width: | 6.8 in. | | Thickness: | 2.2 in. | | Weight: | 41.6 oz. |
| | Publisher's Note | A decade ago, "The Bonfire of the Vanities" defined an era--and established Tom Wolfe as a major fiction chronicler of America at its most outrageous and alive. In his new novel, set in present-day Atlanta, Wolfe shows readers the disparate worlds of contemporary America, as he chronicles the story of an event that shatters the city's delicate racial balance.
Big men. Big money. Big games. Big libidos. Big trouble. A decade ago, The Bonfire of the Vanities defined an era--and established Tom Wolfe as our prime fictional chronicler of America at its most outrageous and alive. This time the setting is Atlanta, Georgia--a racially mixed late-century boomtown full of fresh wealth, avid speculators, and worldly-wise politicians. The protagonist is Charles Croker, once a college football star, now a late-middle-aged Atlanta real-estate entrepreneur turned conglomerate king, whose expansionist ambitions and outsize ego have at last hit up against reality. Charlie has a 28,000-acre quail-shooting plantation, a young and demanding second wife--and a half-empty office tower with a staggering load of debt. When star running back Fareek Fanon--the pride of one of Atlanta's grimmest slums--is accused of raping an Atlanta blueblood's daughter, the city's delicate racial balance is shattered overnight. Networks of illegal Asian immigrants crisscrossing the continent, daily life behind bars, shady real-estate syndicates, cast-off first wives of the corporate elite, the racially charged politics of college sports--Wolfe shows us the disparate worlds of contemporary America with all the verve, wit, and insight that have made him our most phenomenal, most admired contemporary novelist.
| | Industry reviews | "Tom Wolfe may be the hardest-working showoff the literary world has ever owned...[H]e is certainly the most gifted best-seller writer since Margaret Mitchell."
New York Review of Books - Norman Mailer (12/17/1998)
"[A] simple story so loaded with sets and costumes it can hardly move....[I]ts narrative and characterisation are so wanting that it is hardly a novel at all."
Literary Review - Rhoda Koenig (01/19/1999)
|
|
Portions of this page Copyright 1995 - 2009 Muze Inc.  All rights reserved. |
Back to Search Results
) 
Asian Beauty Boutique
Print
Report item
and your 