About this item
NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER * Colum McCanns beloved novel inspired by Philippe Petits daring high-wire stunt, which is also depicted in the film The Walk starring Joseph Gordon-LevittIn the dawning light of a late-summer morning, the people of lower Manhattan stand hushed, staring up in disbelief at the Twin Towers. It is August 1974, and a mysterious tightrope walker is running, dancing, leaping between the towers, suspended a quarter mile above the ground. In the streets below, a slew of ordinary lives become extraordinary in bestselling novelist Colum McCanns stunningly intricate portrait of a city and its people. Let the Great World Spin is the critically acclaimed authors most ambitious novel yet: a dazzlingly rich vision of the pain, loveliness, mystery, and promise of New York City in the 1970s. Corrigan, a radical young Irish monk, struggles with his own demons as he lives among the prostitutes in the middle of the burning Bronx. A group of mothers gather in a Park Avenue apartment to mourn their sons who died in Vietnam, only to discover just how much divides them even in grief. A young artist finds herself at the scene of a hit-and-run that sends her own life careening sideways. Tillie, a thirty-eight-year-old grandmother, turns tricks alongside her teenage daughter, determined not only to take care of her family but to prove her own worth. Elegantly weaving together these and other seemingly disparate lives, McCanns powerful allegory comes alive in the unforgettable voices of the citys people, unexpectedly drawn together by hope, beauty, and the "artistic crime of the century."A sweeping and radical social novel, Let the Great World Spincaptures the spirit of America in a time of transition, extraordinary promise, and, in hindsight, heartbreaking innocence. Hailed as a "fiercely original talent" (San Francisco Chronicle) , award-winning novelist McCann has delivered a triumphantly American masterpiece that awakens in us a sense of what the novel can achieve, confront, and even heal.Praise for Let the Great World Spin"This is a gorgeous book, multilayered and deeply felt, and its a damned lot of fun to read, too. Leave it to an Irishman to write one of the greatest-ever novels about New York. Theres so much passion and humor and pure lifeforce on every page of Let the Great World Spin that youll find yourself giddy, dizzy, overwhelmed." - Dave Eggers"Stunning . . . [an] elegiac glimpse of hope . . . Its a novel rooted firmly in time and place. It vividly captures New York at its worst and best. But it transcends all that. In the end, its a novel about families - the ones were born into and the ones we make for ourselves." - USA Today "The first great 9/11 novel . . . We are all dancing on the wire of history, and even on solid ground we breathe the thinnest of air." - Esquire "Mesmerizing . . . a Joycean look at the lives of New Yorkers changed by a single act on a single day . . . Colum McCanns marvelously rich novel . . . weaves a portrait of a city and a moment, dizzyingly satisfying to read and difficult to put down." - The Seattle Times "Vibrantly whole . . . With a series of spare, gorgeously wrought vignettes, Colum McCann brings 1970s New York to life. . . . And as always, McCanns heart-stoppingly simple descriptions wow." - Entertainment Weekly "An act of pure bravado, dizzying proof that to keep your balance you need to know how to fall." - O: The Oprah Magazine
About the Author
Sign up for Colum's newsletter: Colum McCann is the author of three collections of short stories and six novels, including "Apeirogon," due to be published in Spring 2020. His other books include "TransAtlantic," "Let the Great World Spin," "This Side of Brightness,""Dancer" and "Zoli," all of which were international best-sellers. "Let the Great World Spin" won the National Book Award in 2009. His fiction has been published in over 40 languages and has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, GQ, Paris Review and other places. He has written for numerous publications including The Irish Times, Die Zeit, La Republicca, Paris Match, The New York Times, the Guardian and the Independent. Colum has won numerous international awards and has been a bestseller on four continents. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, as well as the Irish association of artists, Aosdana. He has also received a Chevalier des Artes et des Lettres from the French government. He is the cofounder of the global non-profit story exchange organisation Narrative 4. In 2003 Colum was named Esquire magazine's "Writer of the Year. " Other awards and honors include a Pushcart Prize, the Rooney Prize, the Irish Independent Hughes and Hughes/Sunday Independent Novel of the Year 2003, and the 2002 Ireland Fund of Monaco Princess Grace Memorial Literary Award. He was recently inducted into the Hennessy Hall of Fame for Irish Literature. His short film "Everything in this Country Must," directed by Gary McKendry, was nominated for an Academy Award Oscar in 2005. Colum was born in Dublin in 1965 and began his career as a journalist in The Irish Press. In the early 1980's he took a bicycle across North America and then worked as a wilderness guide in a program for juvenile delinquents in Texas. After a year and a half in Japan, he and his wife Allison moved to New York where they currently live with their three children, Isabella, John Michael and Christian. Colum teaches in Hunter College in New York, in the Creative Writing program, with fellow novelists Peter Carey and Tea Obreht. Colum has completed his new novel, "Apeirogon." Crafted out of a universe of fictional and nonfictional material, McCann tells the story of Bassam Aramin and Rami Elhanan. One is Israeli. One is Palestinian. Both are fathers. Both have lost their daughters to the conflict. When Bassam and Rami learn of each other's stories they recognize the loss that connects them, and they begin to use their grief as a weapon for peace. In the novel McCann crosses centuries and continents. He stitches together time, art, history, nature and politics in a tale both heartbreaking and hopeful. Musical, cinematic, muscular, delicate and soaring, Apeirogon is a novel for our times.It is scheduled for release in the U.S in February 2020. Advance copies will be available he
