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Look Inside | Reading Guide
Reading Guide
May 14, 2002 | ISBN 9780375759932 Buy
Jul 03, 2001 | ISBN 9781588360076 Buy
May 01, 2001 | 375 Minutes Buy
Buy from Other Retailers:
May 14, 2002 | ISBN 9780375759932
Jul 03, 2001 | ISBN 9781588360076
May 01, 2001 | ISBN 9780375419232
375 Minutes
Breathtaking in its suspense and beauty, Carry Me Across the Water is the story of a man’s turbulent journey, with his family, through the central years of the twentieth century. Young August Kleinman escapes from Nazi Germany to America, where his mother’s words—“Take the advice of no one”—fate him to a life of boldness and originality, from the poor streets of New York to the marble mansions of industrial Pittsburgh, from old world Hamburg to the jungle islands of the Pacific. Ultimately, near the end of a long and bountiful life, his resolution of a haunting encounter with a Japanese soldier during World War Two finally illuminates, at the deepest levels, the way authentic lives truly unfold. From the writer hailed as “the most mature and accomplished novelist of his generation” (Alan Cheuse, National Public Radio) comes this “exquisitely modulated short novel” (Los Angeles Times), which “eases its silky-smooth way into a reader’s consciousness even as it plumbs the depths” (Newsday).
“Take the advice of no one,” August Kleinman’s mother says to him while August is still a young boy in Germany, and with these words to guide him, he escapes Nazi Germany and goes on to build a fortune, a family, and life on his own terms in America. At the defining moments that reveal character and shape fate — a shocking encounter with a Japanese soldier in a cave during World War II, the audacious decision to start a brewery in Pittsburgh and a violent reaction against threats to its independent success, a vacation in Barbados, during which his beloved wife mysteriously wanders off, the birth of his grandson — August’s instincts are determinative in a way that illuminates how lives unfold at the deepest levels. This is a brilliant, suspenseful, surprising novel by one of America’s finest writers. Publisher’s Weekly called Ethan Canin’s For Kings and Planets “Masterful … a classic parable of the human condition,” and the same can be said about Carry Me Across the Water.
Ethan Canin is the author of seven books, including the story collections Emperor of the Air and The Palace Thief, and the novels For Kings and Planets, Carry Me Across the Water, America America, and A Doubter’s Almanac. He is on the faculty of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and divides his… More about Ethan Canin
“The most wise and beautiful novel of 2001.”—London Daily Telegraph“Carry Me Across the Water reconfirms Canin’s stature as one of the best fiction writers of his generation.” —The Miami Herald“A daring and heartbreaking success.”—The Atlanta Journal-Constitution“It’s [a] testament to Canin’s mastery that he’s able to encompass the largest possible themes—life and death, war and peace, mortality and transcendence—with such elliptical precision. . . . The novel represents such a powerfully transformative experience—for protagonist and reader alike.”—Chicago Sun-Times“A hypnotic, intricately structured, elegiac novel.” —L.A. Weekly
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