The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios
By Yann Martel
(Mariner Books, Paperback, 9780156032452, 228pp.)
Publication Date: September 2005
Other Editions of This Title: Hardcover, , Compact Disc
Categories: Literary, Short Stories (single author)
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Here are four unforgettable stories by the author of Life of Pi. Written earlier in Martel's career, these tales display that startling mix of dazzle and depth that have made Yann Martel an international phenomenon.
Inventive in form and timeless in content, each story is moving and thought-provoking. A Canadian university student visiting Washington, D.C., experiences the Vietnam War through an intense musical encounter. Variations of a warden's letter to the mother of a man he has just executed reveal how each life is contained in its end. A young man's fascination with the mirror-making machine he finds in his grandmother's attic is juxtaposed with the reminiscences it evokes from his grandmother. And, in the exquisite title story, a young man dying of AIDS joins his friend in fashioning a story of the Roccamatio family of Helsinki, set against the yearly march of the twentieth century.
Yann Martel was born in Spain in 1963 of Canadian parents. After studying philosophy at university, he worked at odd jobs—tree-planter, dishwasher, security guard--and traveled widely before turning to writing at the age of twenty-six. He is the author of a collection of short stories; three novels, including the internationally acclaimed 2002 Man Booker Prize–winning novel Life of Pi, which spent fifty-seven weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, and Beatrice and Virgil; and a collection of letters to the Prime Minister of Canada, What is Stephen Harper Reading?. Yann Martel lives in Saskatchewan, Canada.
PRAISE FOR THE FACTS BEHIND THE HELSINKI ROCCAMATIOS
"Each of these stories is a performance, a high-wire act in which the author sets himself an unusual challenge and dazzles us as he pulls it off. "--The Washington Post Book World
"With uncommon dexterity, Martel . . . inject[s] real, poignant feeling into cleverly conceived experimental fictions."--Entertainment Weekly
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1Q84 Haruki Murakami Knopf |
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The Marriage Plot Jeffrey Eugenides Farrar, Straus, and Giroux |
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The Sense of an Ending Julian Barnes Knopf |
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Death Comes to Pemberley PD James Knopf |
