A Changed Man
By Francine Prose
(Harper Perennial, Paperback, 9780060560034, 448pp.)
Publication Date: February 9, 2006
Categories: General
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What is charismatic Holocaust survivor Meyer Maslow to think when a rough-looking young neo-Nazi named Vincent Nolan walks into the Manhattan office of Maslow's human rights foundation and declares that he wants to "save guys like me from becoming guys like me"? As Vincent gradually turns into the sort of person who might actually be able to do this, he also transforms those around him: Meyer Maslow, who fears heroism has become a desk job; the foundation's dedicated fund-raiser, Bonnie Kalen, an appealingly vulnerable divorced single mother; and even Bonnie's teenage son.
Francine Prose's A Changed Man is a darkly comic and masterfully inventive novel that poses essential questions about human nature, morality, and the capacity for personal reinvention.
Francine Prose is the author of fifteen books of fiction, including A Changed Man and Blue Angel, which was a finalist for the National Book Award, and the nonfiction New York Times bestseller Reading Like a Writer. Her latest novel, Goldengrove, was published in September 2008. She is the president of PEN American Center. She lives in New York City.
"A novel of ideas, and provocative ones. Class--the dirty American secret--is no secret to Prose."
-Richard Eder, Los Angeles Times Book Review
"Well-crafted and insightful."
-San Francisco Chronicle
"This book has it all: great characters, dark humor, a racing plot and important themes."
-Newsday
"American literature's finest satirist of professionals with problems . . . Prose knows the territory and tweaks it deliciously."
-Carlin Romano, Philadelphia Inquirer
"[A] brilliant new comic novel . . . Prose's sense of humor is as keen as ever."
-Miami Herald
"Pitch-perfect and nuanced . . . We can't wait to crawl into bed with this book every night."
-New York Observer
"Francine Prose is back with a powerful new novel about the possibility of starting over."
-Harper's Bazaar
"Timely and clever . . . Prose carries us along on the sheer energy of her sentences."
-Chicago Tribune
"Piercing wit... This tale hits comic high notes even as it probes serious issues."
-Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"[An] artfully structured novel . . . [with] a selection of showstopping literary set pieces."
-Entertainment Weekly
"Powerful, funny, and exquisitely nuanced . . . This story has a continental sweep."
-New York Times Book Review
"Mercilessly funny."
-Janet Maslin, New York Times
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