Colum McCann

For years, Conor Lyons has searched in vain for his mother. Now, at the age of twenty-three, he returns to his native Ireland, to find his dying father fishing obsessively in the polluted waters of a local stream. Driven to continue his search by tantalizingly incomplete family stories, Conor begins to plumb the mystery of his parents' lives. With unreliable memories and scraps of photographs as his only clues, he follows in the tracks of his father - a rootless photographer - as he moved from war-torn Spain, where he accompanied the Fascists, to the barren plains of Mexico, where he met and married Conor's mother, to the American West, and finally back to Ireland, where the marriage and the story reach their heartrending climax. As the narratives of Conor's quest and his parents' tragedy twine and untwine, Colum McCann creates a mesmerizing evocation of the gulf between memory and imagination, love and loss, past and present.

In this story of a woman's search for a meaningful life, Alcott moves outside the family setting of her best knows works. Originally published in 1872, Work is both an exploration of Alcott's personal conflicts and a social critique, examining women's independence, the moral significance of labor, and the goals to which a woman can aspire. Influenced by Transcendentalism and by the women's rights movement, it affirms the possibility of a feminized utopian society.

A tale spanning 150 years and two continents reimagines the peace efforts of democracy champion Frederick Douglass, Senator George Mitchell and World War I airmen John Alcock and Teddy Brown through the experiences of four generations of women from a matriarchal clan.

A story collection includes the title novella, in which an octogenarian retired judge's musings on his life are interrupted by police updates about his murder later that afternoon.

Features literary excerpts and articles written by sportswriters and authors that celebrate one hundred years of American boxing.

In the early years of the century, Nathan Walker leaves the Okefenokee swamps of his native Georgia for New York City and the most dangerous job in America. A sandhog, he burrows beneath the East River, digging the underground tunnel that will carry trains between Brooklyn and Manhattan. In the bowels of the riverbed the sandhogs - black, white, Irish, Italian - dig together; above ground, though, the men keep their distance until a spectacular accident welds a bond between Walker and his fellow sandhogs that will bless and curse the next three generations. Years later, Treefrog, a homeless man driven below by a shameful secret, endures a punishing winter deep in his subway nest. In tones ranging from bleak to dark to disturbingly funny, Treefrog recounts his strategies of survival - killing rats, scavenging for soda cans, washing in the snow, sleeping through the cold - in New York's netherworld. Between Nathan Walker and Treefrog stretch seventy years of ill-fated loves, unintended crimes, and social taboos. The two stories fuse to form a tale of family, race, and redemption.

"From the bestselling author of the National Book Award winner Let the Great World Spin comes a lesson in how to be a writer--and so much more than that. Intriguing and inspirational, this book is a call to look outward rather than inward. McCann asks his readers to constantly push the boundaries of experience, to see empathy and wonder in the stories we craft and hear. A paean to the power of language, both by argument and by example, Letters to a Young Writer is fierce and honest in its testament to the bruises delivered by writing as both a profession and a calling. It charges aspiring writers to learn the rules and even break them. These fifty-two essays are ultimately a profound challenge to a new generation to bring truth and light to a dark world through their art. Praise for the fiction of Colum McCann Let the Great World Spin Winner of the National Book Award "One of the most electric, profound novels I have read in years."--Jonathan Mahler, The New York Times Book Review "There's so much passion and humor and pure life force on every page that you'll find yourself giddy, dizzy, overwhelmed."--Dave Eggers TransAtlantic Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and shortlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award "Reminiscent of the finest work of Michael Ondaatje and Michael Cunningham."--O: The Oprah Magazine "Another sweeping, beautifully constructed tapestry of life. Reading McCann is a rare joy."--The Seattle Times Thirteen Ways of Looking A New York Times Notable Book of the Year "The irreducible mystery of human experience ties this small collection together, and in each of these stories McCann explores that theme in strikingly effective ways."--The Washington Post "Extraordinary. incandescent."--Chicago Tribune"-- "Drawing on the lessons learned throughout a distinguished writing career and nearly 20 years as a teacher of creative writing, McCann delivers a collection of essays that combines practical advice, creative inspiration, and a profound call to arms for a new generation of writers to bring truth and light to a dark world through their art. Addressing subjects such as "The Terror of the White Page," "Embrace the Critics," and "If You're Done, You've Just Begun," this collection is a testament to the bruises of writing as profession and as calling, and a paean to the power of language"--

Ce roman retrace la vie de Rudolf Nourei˜ev.

"A Russian peasant who became an international legend, a Cold War exile who inspired the adoration of millions, an artist whose name was a byword for genius, sex, and excess. The magnificence of Rudolf Nureyev's life and work is known, but now Colum McCann reinvents this figure through the light he shed on the lives of those who knew him."

Eighty pieces of short fiction and nonfiction on manhood by some of the world's best writers. To help launch the literary nonprofit Narrative 4, Esquire asked eighty of the world's greatest writers to chip in with a story, all with the title, "How to Be a Man." The result is The Book of Men, an unflinching investigation into the essence of manhood.

Pour soutenir son association caritative, Narrative 4, C. McCann a réuni autour de lui 75 écrivains, de M. Cunningham à K. Hosseini en passant par S. Rushdie, J. O'Connor, E. O'Brien ou I. McEwan. Leurs textes, courts et inédits, à la frontière entre réalité et fiction, drôles ou graves, abordent la question de l'homme contemporain.

Tout le talent, la poésie, l'émotion de Colum McCann déployés dans un court roman et quatre nouvelles reliés par la violence -- quotidienne, guerrière, psychologique, politique ou sociale --, mais surtout par ces moments de grâce qui font qu'au bout du compte l'espoir reste. (www.payot.ch) "Ces nouvelles étaient presque achevées à l'été 2014, quand j'ai été victime, le 27 juin, d'une agression à New Haven, dans le Connecticut. Certains de ces récits ont été composés avant cette mésaventure, et d'autres après. Il me semble parfois que nous écrivons notre vie à l'avance et que, d'autres fois, nous sommes seulement capables de regarder derrière nous. Mais en fin de compte, chaque mot que nous écrivons est autobiographique, peut-être plus encore quand nous essayons d'éviter toute autobiographie. Malgré tout ce qu'elle doit à l'imagination, la littérature prend des chemins inimaginables." [4e de couverture]