Patrick deWitt - Böcker

‘A perfect novel … on the knife’s edge of hilarity and tenderness’ JONATHAN LETHEM From the Booker-shortlisted author of The Sisters Brothers, Patrick deWitt, comes Dodge City, a thrilling novel about a young man on an amphetamine fuelled cross-country road trip fleeing the draft for the safe haven of Canada. 1967, California. Lee Clarke is a strait-laced twenty-three-year-old from the small town of Concrete, Washington. He is ambling along at college as the social revolution of the sixties unfolds among his peers, until an ill-advised fistfight leads to his expulsion. Days later, a draft letter lands on his doormat, calling him up to fight in the Vietnam War.Lee then makes the first political decision of his life: he will leave the country and head for the border.He kisses his girlfriend for the last time and signs up at a drive-away car delivery service and scores a Jaguar bound for the East Coast. He takes with him only a single suitcase and a bag of amphetamines to speed his course. But Lee knows he can’t slip the country without saying the rest of his goodbyes.In four different towns strung out along the country, Lee visits each member of his family: his father, a World War Two veteran in a state of degradation; his mother, engaged in a buoyantly manic and never-ending performance with her shut-in sibling; his heartbroken, misanthropic brother Harry; and finally his twin sister Grace, a brash, young nurse-in-training mired in romantic drama at a Manhattan psychiatric hospital. He’s speeding towards his future, and yet the past keeps rising up to meet him. Will he make it across the border the same man as when he started this journey?A sweeping portrait of a country in flux and a family in disarray, Dodge City is a beautiful and raucous exploration of family, belonging, love and war. It confirms deWitt as one of our most brilliant satirists and a novelist of staggering heart.

‘A perfect novel … on the knife’s edge of hilarity and tenderness’ JONATHAN LETHEM From the Booker-shortlisted author of The Sisters Brothers, Patrick deWitt, comes Dodge City, a thrilling novel about a young man on an amphetamine fuelled cross-country road trip fleeing the draft for the safe haven of Canada. 1967, California. Lee Clarke is a strait-laced twenty-three-year-old from the small town of Concrete, Washington. He is ambling along at college as the social revolution of the sixties unfolds among his peers, until an ill-advised fistfight leads to his expulsion. Days later, a draft letter lands on his doormat, calling him up to fight in the Vietnam War.Lee then makes the first political decision of his life: he will leave the country and head for the border.He kisses his girlfriend for the last time and signs up at a drive-away car delivery service and scores a Jaguar bound for the East Coast. He takes with him only a single suitcase and a bag of amphetamines to speed his course. But Lee knows he can’t slip the country without saying the rest of his goodbyes.In four different towns strung out along the country, Lee visits each member of his family: his father, a World War Two veteran in a state of degradation; his mother, engaged in a buoyantly manic and never-ending performance with her shut-in sibling; his heartbroken, misanthropic brother Harry; and finally his twin sister Grace, a brash, young nurse-in-training mired in romantic drama at a Manhattan psychiatric hospital. He’s speeding towards his future, and yet the past keeps rising up to meet him. Will he make it across the border the same man as when he started this journey?A sweeping portrait of a country in flux and a family in disarray, Dodge City is a beautiful and raucous exploration of family, belonging, love and war. It confirms deWitt as one of our most brilliant satirists and a novelist of staggering heart.

NOW A MAJOR FILM STARRING MICHELLE PFEIFFER AND LUCAS HEDGESA tragedy of manners from the Man Booker-shortlisted author of The Sisters Brothers‘My favourite book of his yet’ Maria Semple, author of Where'd You Go, Bernadette'Pure joy' Mail on Sunday 'Buoyantly insane' New YorkerFrances Price is in dire straits. Scandals swirl around the recently widowed New York socialite, and her adult-aged, toddler-brained son Malcolm is no help. Cutting their losses, they grab their cat, Small Frank, and head for the exit. Paris becomes the backdrop for a giddy drive to self-destruction, helped along by a cast of singularly curious characters.Brimming with pathos, warmth and wit, French Exit is a riotous send-up of high society and a moving story of mothers and sons.

**AN INTERNATIONAL No. 1 BESTSELLER****Selected as a Washington Post Book of the Summer**'I absolutely adored it' NINA STIBBEFrom bestselling and award-winning author Patrick deWitt comes a novel about an ordinary man who thought life’s surprises were behind him – until a chance encounter changed everythingBob Comet is a retired librarian passing his solitary days surrounded by books in a mint-colored house in Portland, Oregon. One morning on his daily walk he encounters a confused elderly woman lost in a market and returns her to the senior centre that is her home. Hoping to fill the void he’s known since retiring, Bob begins volunteering at the center. Here, as a community of strange peers gathers around Bob, and following a brush with a painful complication from his past, the events of his life and the details of his character are revealed. Behind Bob Comet’s straight man facade is the story of an unhappy child’s runaway adventure during the last days of the Second World War, of true love won and stolen away, of the purpose and pride found in the librarian’s vocation, and the pleasures of a life lived to the side of the masses.

Picture yourself as a bartender, sipping top-shelf whiskey and watching your customers descend into nightly oblivion. Your heart is broken by the world around you and, leaving the whisky aside, you hatch a devious, unthinkable plan of escape…Award-winning FellSwoop Theatre present Ablutions:a dark, modern drama, adapted from the novel by Man Booker shortlisted author, Patrick deWitt. A grimly funny tale from the sodden depths of the Los Angeles underworld, Ablutions blends a live soundtrack with detailed mime and deWitt’s heart-wrenching humour.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE, a darkly funny, offbeat western about a reluctant assassin and his murderous brother. 'The Sisters Brothers confirms deWitt as one of the most talented young writers around' Sunday TimesHermann Kermit Warm is going to die. Across 1000 miles of Oregon desert his assassins, the notorious Eli and Charlies Sisters, ride - fighting, shooting, and drinking their way to Sacramento. But their prey isn't an easy mark, the road is long and bloody, and somewhere along the path Eli begins to question what he does for a living - and who he does it for.Filled with a remarkable cast of losers, cheaters, and ne'er-do-wells from all stripes of life - and told by a complex and compelling narrator, it is a violent, lustful odyssey through the underworld of the 1850s frontier. It beautifully captures the humour, melancholy, and grit of the Old West, through a tale of two brothers bound by blood, violence, and love. 'Superb ... deWitt has ensured another unforgettable pair their place in fictive lore' Sunday TelegraphNOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE STARRING JAKE GYLLENHAAL, JOHN C. REILLY AND JOAQUIN PHOENIX

'An instant classic' DazedA nameless barman tends a decaying bar in Hollywood and takes notes for a book about his clientele. Initially, he is morbidly amused by watching the regulars roll in and fall into their nightly oblivion, pitying them and their loneliness. In hopes of uncovering their secrets and motives, he establishes tentative friendships with them. He also knocks back pills indiscriminately and treats himself to gallons of Jameson's.But as his tenure at the bar continues, he begins to lose himself, trapped by addiction and indecision. When his wife leaves him, he embarks on a series of squalidly random sexual encounters and a downward spiral of self-damage and irrational violence. To cleanse himself and save his soul, he attempts to escape...

SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE, a darkly funny, offbeat western about a reluctant assassin and his murderous brother. 'The Sisters Brothers confirms deWitt as one of the most talented young writers around' Sunday TimesHermann Kermit Warm is going to die. Across 1000 miles of Oregon desert his assassins, the notorious Eli and Charlies Sisters, ride - fighting, shooting, and drinking their way to Sacramento. But their prey isn't an easy mark, the road is long and bloody, and somewhere along the path Eli begins to question what he does for a living - and who he does it for.Filled with a remarkable cast of losers, cheaters, and ne'er-do-wells from all stripes of life - and told by a complex and compelling narrator, it is a violent, lustful odyssey through the underworld of the 1850s frontier. It beautifully captures the humour, melancholy, and grit of the Old West, through a tale of two brothers bound by blood, violence, and love. 'Superb... deWitt has ensured another unforgettable pair their place in fictive lore' Sunday TelegraphNOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE STARRING JAKE GYLLENHAAL, JOHN C. REILLY AND JOAQUIN PHOENIX

A nameless barman tends a decaying bar in Hollywood and takes notes for a book about his clientele. Initially, he is morbidly amused by watching the regulars roll in and fall into their nightly oblivion, pitying them and their loneliness. In hopes of uncovering their secrets and motives, he establishes tentative friendships with them. He also knocks back pills indiscriminately and treats himself to gallons of Jameson's. But as his tenure at the bar continues, he begins to lose himself, trapped by addiction and indecision. When his wife leaves him, he embarks on a series of squalidly random sexual encounters and a downward spiral of self-damage and irrational violence. To cleanse himself and save his soul, he attempts to escape ...