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The Convalescent is the story of a small, bearded man selling meat out of a bus parked next to a stream in suburban Virginia ... and also, somehow, the story of 10,000 years of Hungarian history. Jessica Anthony, the inaugural winner of the Amanda Davis Highwire Fiction Award, makes an unforgettable debut with an unforgettable hero: Rovar Ákos Pfliegman — unlikely bandit, unloved lover, and historian of the unimportant.
"Starred Review. Anthony's style - funny, immediate and apologetically cerebral - carves out a space all its own." - Publishers Weekly
"Jessica Anthony is a writer possessed of mind-bending talents.
Inconceivably, she's written a novel that's innocent and wise, grave and
hilarious, bleak and hopeful, fast-paced and meditative, heartbreaking and
heart healthy, evanescent and concrete. Reading it, I felt as though I'd
stumbled upon a magical text that might, at any moment, disappear from my
hands. The Convalescent is that kind of special." - Heidi Julavits
"Jessica Anthony has given a voice—wry, sad, and arresting—to the wounded
little homunculus that lives, largely ignored, in all of us, a creature that
wrestles with a guilt and grief that is as historical as it is personal. The
Convalescent is a melancholy delight." - Chris Adrian
"The Convalescent is a fleshy fable spinning in and out of its own enormous,
fabulous history. It is lush, cranky, and powered by dark, sweet humor.
Mesmerizing. And a lot of fun. I enjoyed it completely." - Katherine Dunn
This information about The Convalescent 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.
Jessica Anthony is the author of three books of fiction, including the novel Enter the Aardvark, a finalist for the New England Book Award in Fiction. A recipient of the Creative Capital Award in Literature, Anthony wrote The Most while guarding the Mária Valéria Bridge in Štúrovo, Slovakia. She lives in Portland, Maine.
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