Shadow Country Synopsis
Inspired by a near-mythic event of the wild Florida frontier at the turn of the twentieth century, Shadow Country reimagines the legend of the inspired Everglades sugar planter and notorious outlaw E. J. Watson, who drives himself to his own violent end at the hands of his neighbours. His son Lucius investigates the killing which has come to obsess him.
In this bold new rendering of the Watson trilogy Matthiessen has deepened the insights and motivations of his characters, consolidating his fictional masterwork into a poetic, compelling novel of a monumental scope and ambition, with breathtaking accomplishment.
About This Edition
ISBN: |
9780857381309 |
Publication date: |
11th December 2020 |
Author: |
Peter Matthiessen |
Publisher: |
MacLehose Press an imprint of Quercus Publishing |
Format: |
Paperback |
Pagination: |
912 pages |
Primary Genre |
Historical Fiction
|
Peter Matthiessen Press Reviews
'The fiction of Peter Matthiessen is the reason a lot of people in my generation decided to be writers ... Shadow Country lives up to anyone's expectations of great writing' Richard Ford. - Richard Ford
'Shadow Country's size and scope may throw down a challenge, but anyone who takes it up will only be rewarded. If this isn't a great novel, American or otherwise, I don't know what is' Jonathan Gibbs, Independent. - Independent
'It's the story of our continent, both land and people, and his writing does every justice to the blood fury of his themes' Don Delillo. - Don DeLillo
'Altogether gripping, shocking, and brilliantly told . . . as powerful a reading experience as nearly any in our literature' Michael Dirda, New York Review of Books. - New York Review of Books
'I read it in great gulps, up later each night than I wanted to be, in my hungry impatience to find out more' Joseph Heller. - Joseph Heller
'After seven years of rewriting and reimaging his 'Mister Watson' trilogy, Peter Matthiessen has produced an epic novel of the Florida Everglades, Shadow Country, a book that can be fairly spoken of in the same breath as Moby-Dick and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn for both the grandeur of its literary architecture and its command of American vernacular speech' Jonathan Raban, Guardian. - Guardian
About Peter Matthiessen
Peter Matthiessen is the author of more than thirty books and the only writer to win the National Book Award for both non-fiction (The Snow Leopard, in two categories, in 1979 and 1980) and fiction (Shadow Country, in 2008). A co-founder of The Paris Review and a world-renowned naturalist, explorer and activist, he died in April 2014.
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