Guided Tours of Hell
Novellas
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4.0 • 3 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
An “irresistibly readable” pair of novellas skewering Americans abroad—by the New York Times–bestselling author and National Book Award finalist(The New York Times Book Review).
“In a style that is bold, witty, richly detailed, and suffused with a wry subtlety,” Francine Prose offers penetrating portraits of Americans in Europe who have brought all their baggage—ego, ambition, sexual desire—with them (Elle).
Guided Tours of Hell
When the insecure (and rightfully so) playwright Landau travels from New York to Prague to read at the first annual Kafka conference, he’s certain this is his chance to prove himself—and his work. But he quickly finds himself upstaged by Jiri Krakauer, a charismatic Holocaust survivor whose claim to fame is a long-ago death-camp love affair with Kafka’s sister. On a group tour to the camp-turned-tourist-attraction, Landau sets out to prove that Krakauer is lying—with unexpected results.
Three Pigs in Five Days
Ambitious young journalist Nina has been stranded in Paris by her editor and sometimes boyfriend, Leo. When he finally shows up, playfully suggesting a romantic tour of the catacombs, prisons, and shadows of the City of Light, the bloom begins to come off the rose for the infatuated Nina—who must ask herself how much of herself she is willing to sacrifice for love.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The ego is a slippery thing. Suppress it and it sneaks in through the back door all the stronger. In the two deftly written novellas included in this volume, Prose (Hunters and Gatherers) creates funny, brilliantly authentic examples of this resilient truth. In the title piece, Landau, a mediocre New York playwright attending a conference on Kafka in Prague, tours a Nazi death camp. Aware that there is "something by definition obscene about guided tours of hell--except, of course, if you're Dante,'' he nonetheless spends his time consumed with self-conscious envy of a fellow writer at the conference, Jiri Krakauer, a big, handsome, charismatic Auschwitz survivor. Landau obsesses about Jiri, "Mr. Zest-For-Life,'' as he struggles to manufacture a feeling or a reflection that might be appropriate to a death camp that has become a theme park. Jiri reminds Landau that under all of Landau's layers of intellectualization and overdramatization, he pines for a life that has meaning. In "Three Pigs in Five Days,'' Nina, a young writer, holes up in a dumpy Paris hotel room, unable to face the city without Leo, her editor and lover. "Although they've been lovers for months, he apparently wasn't someone she knew well enough to ask'' why he has sent her there alone, Nina realizes. Venturing out at last, Nina understands that she has sacrificed herself and her own dreams to his self-protective version of reality. These small, wonderfully well-observed tales bubble with the energy of real adventure and discovery. Prose has done what only the best writers can do: she shows us something new about the subtle peek-a-boo game we play with reality. Author tour; rights: Georges Borchardt.
