Synopses & Reviews
Marshall Pearl is orphaned at birth aboard an illegal immigrant ship off the coast of Palestine in 1947 and brought as an infant to America. Determined to see the world in its beauty, ferocity, and ultimate justice, he does so, in scenes of gorgeous color and great excitement, as a child in the Hudson Valley, fighting the Rastafarians in Jamaica, at Harvard, in a slaughterhouse on the Great Plains, in the Mexican desert, on the sea, and in the Alps. Finally, he is drawn to Israel to confront the logic of his birth in a crucible of war, magic, suffering, and grace. At the opening of the book, he is one of the dying wounded being transported to Haifa during the 1973 War. We follow him as he dreams, reconstructing his life, until, by the strength of what he has learned, suffered, and hoped, Marshall Pearl rises.
Winner of the National Jewish Book Award and nominee for both the PEN/Faulkner Award and the american Book Award, these ten stories and the celebrated title novella are beyond compare... Helprin's imagination should be protected by some intellectual equivalent of the National Park Service (Philadelphia Inquirer).
Review
PRAISE FOR ELLIS ISLAND
"It's genius. . . . Ellis Island ascends to the peak of literary achievement." - The Boston Globe
"Such an ambitious reach is almost unheard of in our short fiction." - The New York Times Book Review
"Constant brilliance . . . Rarely less than breathtaking . . . every single story sings with purity, vibrates with light."- The Plain Dealer (Cleveland)
Synopsis
Winner of the Prix de Rome and the National Jewish Book Award, these ten stories and the title novella, "Ellis Island," exhibit tremendous range and versatility of style and technique, yet are closely unified in their beauty and in their concern with enduring and universal questions.
Synopsis
These ten stories and the title novella, Ellis Island, exhibit a tremendous range and versatility of style and technique and yet are closely unified in their beauty and in their concern with enduring and universal questions.
"It's genius . . . Ellis Island ascends to the peak of literary achievement." -- The Boston Globe
"Such an ambitious reach is almost unheard of in our short fiction." -- New York Times Book Review
"Constant brilliance . . . Rarely less than heartbreaking . . . every single story sings with purity, vibrates with light." -- Cleveland Plain Dealer
"Stories beyond compare . . . [Helprin's] imagination should be protected by some intellectual equivalent of the National Park Service." -- Philadelphia Inquirer
Mark Helprin is the author of, among other titles, the New York Times best-sellers Winter's Tale and A Soldier of the Great War.
About the Author
Educated at Harvard, Princeton, and Oxford, MARK HELPRIN served in the Israeli army, Israeli Air Force, and British Merchant Navy. He is the author of, among other titles, A Dove of the East and Other Stories, Refiner's Fire, Winter's Tale, and A Soldier of the Great War. He lives in Virginia.
Table of Contents
The Schreuderspitze 1
Letters from the Samantha 35
Martin Bayer 49
North Light 65
A Vermont Tale 71
White Gardens 91
Palais de Justice 95
A Room of Frail Dancers 107
La Volpaia 117
Tamar 121
Ellis Island 133