Synopses & Reviews
One of the most original, dazzling, and critically acclaimed debut novels this year.In this debut novel, hailed by Stephen King as ?terrifying, touching, and wildly funny,? the stories of two strangers, Eugene Brentani and Mr. Schmitz, interweave. What unfolds is a bold reinvention of storytelling in which Eugene, a devotee of the reclusive and monstrous author, Constance Eakins, and Mr. Schmitz, who has been receiving ominous letters from an old friend, embark from New York for Italy, where the line between imagination and reality begins to blur and stories take on a life of their own.
Review
Ambitious, intelligent, hallucinatory, and, most important: heartfelt.
Gary Shteyngart
When Rich writes of his characters, their affections, their impulses and failings, he writes generously and movingly
pointing the way to Nathaniel Richs promise as a fiction writer.
The New York Times Book Review
Sublime invention.
New York Magazine
Daring, wonderfully weird
as haunting as the reality-collapsing yarns of Paul Auster.
Interview
If youre a Pynchon or Fowles fan, its a novel for you.
San Francisco Chronicle
Few American fiction debuts in recent years have thumbed their noses at literary convention like Nathaniel Richs The Mayors Tongue.
Time Out New York
Synopsis
In this debut novel, hailed by Stephen King as terrifying, touching, and wildly funny, the stories of two strangers, Eugene Brentani and Mr. Schmitz, interweave.
About the Author
Nathaniel Rich has published essays and criticism in The New York Review of Books, Vanity Fair, The New York Times Book Review, The Los Angeles Times Book Review, The Nation, The New Republic, and Slate. He is an editor at The Paris Review.