John Hawkes – författare

"No synopsis conveys the quality of this now famous novel about an hallucinated Germany in collapse after World War II. John Hawkes, in his search for a means to transcend outworn modes of fictional realism, has discovered a a highly original technique for objectifying the perennial degradation of mankind within a context of fantasy.... Nowhere has the nightmare of human terror and the deracinated sensibility been more consciously analyzed than in The Cannibal. Yet one is aware throughout that such analysis proceeds only in terms of a resolutely committed humanism." - Hayden Carruth

But it would be unfair to the reader to reveal what happens when a gang of professional crooks gets wind of the scheme and moves to muscle in on this bettors' dream of a long-odds situation. Worked out with all the meticulous detail, terror, and suspense of a nightmare, thetale is, on one level, comparable to a Graham Greene thriller; on another, it explores a group of people, their relationships fears, and loves. For as Leslie A. Fiedler says in his introduction, "John Hawkes... makes terror rather than love the center of his work, knowing all thewhile, of course, that there can be no terror without the hope for loveand love's defeat . . . ."

While investigating his mentor's life and death, Michael, a voyeuristic fashion photographer, travels through a Dionysian landscape where sex is daydream, women and horses share the same erotic power, and perversity is the rule. An inventive mix of biography, history, erotica, and classic whodunit, "Whistlejacket" is John Hawkes at his best as he blurs distinctions between death and desire, image and language, art and morality.