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The first novel by the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Trust, an exquisite and blisteringly intelligent story of a young Swedish boy, separated from his brother, who becomes a legend and an outlaw.
A young Swedish immigrant finds himself penniless and alone in California. The boy travels east in search of his brother, moving on foot against the great current of emigrants pushing west. Driven back again and again, he meets criminals, naturalists, religious fanatics, swindlers, American Indians, and lawmen, and his exploits turn him into a legend. Diaz defies the conventions of historical fiction and genre, offering a probing look at the stereotypes that populate our past and a portrait of radical foreignness.
"[B]rilliant...Diaz cleverly updates an old-fashioned yarn, and his novel is rife with exquisite moments...The book contains some of the finest landscape writing around." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"While set in the American West, this is no conventional Western, as it turns the genre's stereotypes upside down, taking place on a frontier as much mythic as real with a main character traveling east." —Library Journal (starred review)
"An ambitious and thoroughly realized work of revisionist historical fiction." —Kirkus Reviews
"This suspenseful novel is a potent depiction of loneliness, a memorable immigration narrative, and a canny reinvention of the old-school western." —Publishers Weekly
"Stitched through with humor, this often-unpredictable novel will keep readers running along with every step of Håkan's odd escapades." —Booklist
"A singular and deeply affecting portrait of one man's life in a rapidly changing world." —The Guardian (UK)
"Diaz is bound to join ranks with Borges on the literary scene with this mythical personality, still at large in our consciousness long after we've put down the book." —BookPage
"[An] extraordinary epic tale of a lone man's journey into the heart of the American frontier." —Financial Times
"Strange and transporting ... In the Distance [is] an uncanny achievement." —The New York Times
"The prose is as unbroken as the horizon... . It's as if Herman Melville had navigated the American West, instead of the ocean." —The Nation
"[In the Distance] excels in creating a sense of disorientating foreignness. The result is richly drawn and something like Huckleberry Finn written by Cormac McCarthy: an adventure story as well as a meditation on the meaning of home." —The Sunday Times (UK)
This information about In the Distance was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Photo: Pascal Perich
Hernan Diaz is the Pulitzer Prize–winning and New York Times bestselling author of Trust. His first novel, In the Distance, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, won the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing, was translated into more than twenty languages, and was one of Publishers Weekly's Top 10 books of the year and Literary Hub's twenty best novels of the decade. Trust was translated into more than thirty languages, received the Kirkus Prize, was longlisted for the Booker Prize, and was named one of the 10 Best Books of the Year by The New York Times, The Washington Post, NPR, and Time magazine, and it was one of The New Yorker's 12 Essential Reads of the Year and one of Barack Obama's favorite books of the year. His work ...
... Full Biography
Link to Hernan Diaz's Website
Name Pronunciation
Hernan Diaz: air-NAHN dee-AZ (last syllable like the word "as")
He has only half learned the art of reading who has not added to it the more refined art of skipping and skimming
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