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A New York Times Notable Book from the PEN/Faulkner Award-winning author. "An imaginative exploration of the tragedy of lost friendship" (Los Angeles Times) . In prose that is darkly humorous and alive with detail, Valiant Gentlemen reimagines the lives and intimate friendships of humanitarian and Irish patriot Roger Casement; his closest friend, Herbert Ward; and Wards extraordinary wife, the Argentinian American heiress Sarita Sanford. Valiant Gentlemen takes the reader on an intimate journey, from Ward and Casements misadventurous youth in the Congo - where, among other things, they bore witness to an Irish whiskey heirs taste for cannibalism - to Wards marriage to Sarita and their flourishing family life in France, to Casements covert homosexuality and enduring nomadic lifestyle floating between his work across the African continent and involvement in Irish politics. When World War I breaks out, Casement and Wards longstanding political differences finally come to a head and when Ward and his teenage sons leave to fight on the frontlines for England, Casement begins to work alongside the Germans to help free Ireland from British rule. What results is tragic and riveting, as both men are forced to confront notions of love and betrayal in the face of the vastly different tracks their lives have taken. Reminiscent of the work of Peter Carey and Michael Ondaatje, Valiant Gentlemen is a uniquely human account of some of early twentieth centurys larger historical figures from a "ravishing" (O, The Oprah Magazine) and "brilliant" voice in fiction today (The Boston Globe) .



About the Author

Sabina Murray

Sabina Murray was born in 1968 in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. She is of mixed parentage - her mother a Filipina from Manila, her father a former Jesuit scholastic turned anthropologist from Boston. Her parents met in Washington DC, where both were pursuing graduate degrees. At the age of two she moved to Perth with her family, when her father accepted a position at the University of Western Australia. In 1980 the family moved again, this time to Manila, to be closer to her mother's family. Although Sabina Murray is an American citizen, she did not live again in the United States until she attended college. She feels that she moves easily through the various cultures that have forged her own identity: Australian, Filipino, and American. She now lives in Amherst, Massachusetts, with her family, where she directs, and teaches in, the Creative Writing Program at Umass. In 1989, Murray's novel, Slow Burn, set in the decadent Manila of the mid-eighties, was accepted for publication, when Murray was twenty years old. Later, she attended the University of Texas at Austin where she started work on The Caprices, a short story collection that explores the Pacific Campaign of WWII. In 1999, Murray left Texas for Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she had a Radcliffe Fellowship at Harvard. In January, 2002, Murray published The Caprices, which won the PEN Faulkner Award. Murray's next novel, A Carnivore's Inquiry, follows Katherine Shea, a woman of strange appetites, as she moves from man to man ruminating on the nature of cannibalism in western history, literature and art. The book is a dark comedy that is concerned with power and hunger. Forgery is her most recent book, and this looks at authenticity by following Rupert Brigg, who is exploring art and escaping grief in Greece in the early sixties. Both novels were Chicago Tribune Best Books. Her most recent book, Tales of The New World, a collection of short stories with an interest in explorers, was released by Grove/?Black Cat in November, 2011. She is hard at work on a novel that looks at the friendship between the Irish revolutionary Roger Casement and the artist Herbert Ward.Murray is also a screenwriter and wrote the script for the film Beautiful Country, released in 2005. Beautiful Country follows the story of Binh, a young Amerasian man who comes to the U.S. from Vietnam in search of the father he never knew. Terrence Malick commissioned Murray to write the screenplay.Murray has been a Michener Fellow at UT Austin, a Bunting fellow at Radcliffe, a Guggenheim Fellow, and has received the PEN/?Faulkner Award, a Massachusetts Cultural Council Grant, a Umass Research and Creativity Award, and a Fred Brown Award for The Novel from the University of Pittsburgh. Beautiful Country was nominated for a Golden Bear and the screenplay was nominated for an Amanda Award (the Norwegian Oscars!) and an Independent Spirit Award.



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