Patrick de Witt wordt geprezen om zijn kenmerkende stem en scherpe humor. Zijn verhalen duiken vaak in de levens van excentrieke personages die zich door ongebruikelijke omstandigheden manoeuvreren, gekenmerkt door droge humor en onverwachte wendingen. Met een scherp oog voor het absurde en een diep begrip van de menselijke natuur creëert de Witt gedenkwaardige verhalen die lezers aantrekken. Zijn vermogen om duistere thema's te combineren met komische elementen zorgt voor een werkelijk unieke leeservaring.
Shortlisted for: International Author of the Year - Specsavers National Book Awards 2012 Oregon, 1851. Eli and Charlie Sisters, notorious professional killers, are on their way to California to kill a man named Hermann Kermit Warm. On the way, the brothers have a series of unsettling experiences in the landscape of Gold Rush America. And they bicker a lot. Arriving in California, and discover that Warm has invented a magical formula, which could make all of them very rich. What happens next is utterly gripping, strange and sad....
Undermajordomo Minor is the raucous, poignant and spectacularly enjoyable new masterpiece from the author of Man Booker Prize-shortlisted The Sisters Brothers.
Frances Price - tart widow, possessive mother, and Upper East Side force of nature - is in dire straits, beset by scandal and impending bankruptcy. Her adult son Malcolm is no help, mired in a permanent state of arrested development. And then there's the Price's aging cat, Small Frank, who Frances believes houses the spirit of her late husband, an infamously immoral litigator and world-class cad whose gruesome tabloid death rendered Frances and Malcolm social outcasts. Putting penury and pariahdom behind them, the family decides to cut their losses and head for the exit. One ocean voyage later, the curious trio land in their beloved Paris, the City of Light serving as a backdrop not for love or romance, but self-destruction and economic ruin - to riotous effect. A number of singular characters serve to round out the cast: a bashful private investigator, an aimless psychic proposing a seance, a doctor who makes house calls with his wine merchant in tow, and the inimitable Mme. Reynard, aggressive houseguest and dementedly friendly American expat. Brimming with pathos and wit, French Exit is a one-of-a-kind 'tragedy of manners,' a riotous send-up of high society, as well as a moving mother and son caper which only Patrick deWitt could conceive and execute
AN INTERNATIONAL No. 1 BESTSELLER Selected as a Washington Post Book of the
Summer 'I absolutely adored it' NINA STIBBE From bestselling and award-winning
author Patrick deWitt comes a novel about an ordinary man who thought life's
surprises were behind him - until a chance encounter changed everything Bob
Comet is a retired librarian passing his solitary days surrounded by books in
a mint-colored house in Portland, Oregon. One morning on his daily walk he
encounters a confused elderly woman lost in a market and returns her to the
senior centre that is her home. Hoping to fill the void he's known since
retiring, Bob begins volunteering at the center. Here, as a community of
strange peers gathers around Bob, and following a brush with a painful
complication from his past, the events of his life and the details of his
character are revealed. Behind Bob Comet's straight man facade is the story of
an unhappy child's runaway adventure during the last days of the Second World
War, of true love won and stolen away, of the purpose and pride found in the
librarian's vocation, and the pleasures of a life lived to the side of the
masses.
