$17.00

Philadelphia Fire

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UPC: 9781982148843
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Authors: John Edgar Wideman
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  • Paperback: 208 pages
  • Publisher: Vintage; Reprint edition (November 5, 1991)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0679736506
  • ISBN-13: 978-0679736509
  • Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.5 x 7.8 inches

Philadelphia Fire is the most ambitious, most highly praised, and best-selling work of fiction by "one of America's premier writers of fiction" (The York Times). Based on the 1985 bombing police of a West Philadelphia row house owned the Afrocentric cult Move, it tells of Cudjoe, a writer who returns to his old neighborhood after a decade of self-imposed exile, obsessed with finding the lone boy who was seen running from the flames.

Review

"A passionate, angry and formally fascinating novel of urban disintegration."

-- The New York Times Book Review"A book brimming over with brutal, emotional honesty and moments of beautiful prose lyricism."

-- Charles Johnson, Washington Post Book World

"A blaze of rage...Wideman's genius for impassioned imagery triumphs and Philadelphia Fire delivers its message with a careening momentum and astonishing precision.... Wideman [is] our most powerful and accomplished artist of the urban black world."

-- Los Angeles Times Book Review

"Like the Russian master [Dostoevsky], Wideman probes the torments of the soul.... [He] is fashioning some of the most powerful literature today." -- U.S. News & World Report

Author

JOHN EDGAR WIDEMAN is the author of more than twenty works of fiction and nonfiction, including the award-winning Brothers and Keepers, Philadelphia Fire, and most recently the story collection God's Gym. He is the recipient of two PEN/ Faulkner Awards and has been nominated for the National Book Award. He teaches at Brown University.