Tim O’Brien – författare

The million-copy bestseller, which is a ground-breaking meditation on war, memory, imagination, and the redemptive power of storytelling.‘The Things They Carried’ is, on its surface, a sequence of award-winning stories about the madness of the Vietnam War; at the same time it has the cumulative power and unity of a novel, with recurring characters and interwoven strands of plot and theme.But while Vietnam is central to ‘The Things They Carried’, it is not simply a book about war. It is also a book about the human heart – about the terrible weight of those things we carry through our lives.

From the winner of the National Book Award and author of In the Lake of the Woods - a wildly funny, brilliantly inventive novel about a man torn between two obsessions: the desperate need to win back his former wife and a craving to test his erotic charms on every woman he meets.

Winner of the National Book Award, ‘Going After Cacciato’ captures the peculiar mixture of horror and hallucination that marked the Vietnam War, this strangest of wars.In a blend of reality and fantasy, this novel tells the story of a young soldier who one day lays down his rifle and sets off on a quixotic journey from the jungles of Indochina to the streets of Paris.In its memorable evocation of men both fleeing from and meeting the demands of battle, ‘Going After Cacciato’ stands as much more than just a great war novel. Ultimately it's about the forces of fear and heroism that do battle in the hearts of us all.

A remarkable novel from the National Book Award-winning author of ‘Going After Cacciato’ and ‘The Things They Carried’, which combines the power of the finest Vietnam fiction with the tension of a many-layered mystery.In a remote lakeside cabin deep in the Minnesota forests, Kathy Wade is comforting her husband John, an ambitious politician, after a devastating electoral defeat.Then one night she vanishes, and gradually the search for Kathy becomes a voyage into the darkest corners of John Wade’s life, a life of deception and deceit – the life of a man able to escape everything but the chains of his darkest secret.

The acclaimed novel from the award-winning author of ‘If I Die in a Combat Zone’, ‘Going After Cacciato’ and ‘In the Lake of the Woods’.The action in ‘Northern Lights’ takes place not in Vietnam but back in the USA, as Tim O’Brien explores the after-effects of that war – on those who served, and those they left behind.Set in the frozen wilderness of north Minnesota, it concerns two brothers, one who served in Vietnam, and has returned tough, cynical and world-weary; and the other who stayed at home. When they take off on a long skiing trip together through the frozen woods, they quickly get lost in a blizzard, and are tested to their limits as they face a battle against the elements and each other.

In a tour de force of black comedy, award-winning novelist Tim O’Brien explores the battle of the sexes and creates a savage, startlingly inventive tale with a memorably maddening hero, a modern-day Don Juan who embodies the desires and bewilderment of men everywhere.Pompous, vain, shallow, inconsiderate, untrustworthy, fickle… linguistics professor Thomas ‘Tomcat’ Chippering is a man much like any other. But when his serial flirting finally drives his wife into the arms of a Florida tycoon, it is more than his fragile pride can stand, and he sets off in pursuit, with vengeance on his mind…

At a thirty-year reunion, a group of old friends tell the story of their lives – and the story of a generation – in this brilliant new novel from one of America’s most celebrated writers.What happened to all those hopes and ideals? After thirty years, a group of friends are reunited in their old college gymnasium for a weekend of dancing and drinking, reminiscence and revelation. A mop manufacturer and a bigamist, a war veteran and a trophy wife, a glamour model and a defrocked priest – each character has an extraordinary tale to tell in the compelling new novel from former National Book Award-winner Tim O’Brien.

Hailed as one of the finest books to emerge from the Vietnam War, If I Die in a Combat Zone is a fascinating insight into the lives of the soldiers caught in the conflict.First published in 1973, this intensely personal novel about one foot soldier’s tour of duty in Vietnam established Tim O’Brien’s reputation as the outstanding chronicler of the Vietnam experience for a generation of Americans.From basic training to the front line and back again, he takes the reader on an unforgettable journey – walking the minefields of My Lai, fighting the heat and the snipers in an alien land, crawling into the ghostly tunnels – as he explores the ambiguities of manhood and morality in a war no one believes in.

The bestselling author of The Things They Carried and If I Die in a Combat Zone shares wisdom from a life in letters, lessons learned in wartime, and the challenges, humour and rewards of raising two sons.When Tim O’Brien became an older father, he resolved to give his young sons what he wished his own father had given to him – a few scraps of paper signed ‘Love, Dad’. Maybe a word of advice. Maybe a sentence or two about some long-ago Christmas Eve. Maybe some scattered glimpses of their rapidly ageing father, a man they might never really know. For the next fifteen years, the author talked to his sons on paper, as if they were adults, imagining what they might want to hear from a father who was no longer among the living.O’Brien traverses the great variety of human experience and emotion, moving from soccer games to warfare to risqué lullabies, from alcoholism to magic shows to history lessons to bittersweet bedtime stories, but always returning to a father’s soul-saving love for his sons.The result is Dad’s Maybe Book, a funny, tender, wise, and enduring literary achievement that will squeeze the reader’s heart with joy and recognition.

“O’Brien’s first novel in two decades was well worth the wait. . . . In the age of ‘mythomania,’ O’Brien takes aim at the lies that power this country, and how and why they sustain us. America Fantastica peers straight into the dark heart of the American psyche, and it's unafraid of the comedy and tragedy staring back.” — Esquire, Best Books of the FallAn American Master returns: the author of The Things They Carried delivers his first new novel in two decades, a brilliant and rollicking odyssey, in which a bank robbery sparks “a satirical romp through a country plagued by deceit” (Kirkus, starred review)At 11:34 a.m. one Saturday in August 2019, Boyd Halverson strode into Community National Bank in Northern California.“How much is on hand, would you say?” he asked the teller. “I’ll want it all.”“You’re robbing me?”He revealed a Temptation .38 Special.The teller, a diminutive redhead named Angie Bing, collected eighty-one thousand dollars.Boyd stuffed the cash into a paper grocery bag.“I’m sorry about this,” he said, “but I’ll have to ask you to take a ride with me.”So begins the adventure of Boyd Halverson—star journalist turned notorious online disinformation troll turned JCPenney manager—and his irrepressible hostage, Angie Bing. Haunted by his past and weary of his present, Boyd has one goal before the authorities catch up with him: settle a score with the man who destroyed his life. By Monday the pair reach Mexico; by winter, they are in a lakefront mansion in Minnesota. On their trail are hitmen, jealous lovers, ex-cons, an heiress, a billionaire shipping tycoon, a three-tour veteran of Iraq, and the ghosts of Boyd’s past. Everyone, it seems, except the police.In the tradition of Jonathan Swift and Mark Twain, America Fantastica delivers a biting, witty, and entertaining story about the causes and costs of outlandish fantasy, while also marking the triumphant return of an essential voice in American letters. And at the heart of the novel, amid a teeming cast of characters, readers will delight in the tug-of-war between two memorable and iconic human beings—the exuberant savior-of-souls Angie Bing and the penitent but compulsive liar Boyd Halverson. Just as Tim O’Brien’s modern classic, The Things They Carried, so brilliantly reflected the unromantic truth of war, America Fantastica puts a mirror to a nation and a time that has become dangerously unmoored from truth and greedy for delusion.

“Tim O’Brien is the one American author whose works I look forward to the most.” —Haruki MurakamiThe author of the American classic The Things They Carried returns with what may be his finest novel yet, an unconventional love story that unspools over decades and across continents between a Lutheran minister who has lost his faith and a young woman, brilliant and blazingly delinquent, fleeing a traumatic past.Bought a horse. I’m riding her to South Dakota or Montana or Wyoming or Mars. You were good to me. But watch out for clarity. People who know all the answers are fucking fools.The minister of Damascus Lutheran Church in St. Paul, MN, Tom Barrie—a former U.S. Army Chaplain Assistant who had deployed to Afghanistan in 2003—is wrestling with a crisis of faith. Ruby Stjern—a pregnant nineteen-year-old, alone in the world, who lives by her considerable wits—seeks Tom’s help in arranging for the unwanted child to be adopted.When the baby is stillborn, Tom lies to Ruby, telling her the child survived. Tom is haunted by his lie, and becomes obsessed with finding Ruby, who has vanished into the underworld of street life, triggering an odyssey that marks their lives over decades to come.Forever bonded, the two find freedom in their own ways—Tom through minor keys of commitment and duty; Ruby through her expansive expression of life. As epic as Going After Cacciato and as deeply philosophical as The Things They Carried, Clarity is a return to the grand themes and scope that make Tim O’Brien one of the great writers of our time.

Alfonso Zamora is an aging Mexican senior tour player who has discovered he's going blind. Rita Shaugnessy is a lusty, hard-drinking, down-on-her-luck golfer on the women's pro tour. Billy Sprague is a country club pro with the most beautiful golf swing - except when there's money on the line. All three receive an invitation from Philip Bates, the richest man in the world and the founder of Macrodyne Software, to play in a mysterious golf tounament held on a never-before-seen course in Scotland. There the three will play in what will be the golf match of all time and upon whose results rests the fate of the world.

Best-selling author Tim O'Brien shares wisdom from a life in letters, lessons learned in wartime, and the challenges, humor, and rewards of raising two sons.

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