Editorial Reviews
Book Description
From "one of America's premier writers of fiction" (New York Times) comes this novel inspired by the 1985 police bombing of a West Philadelphia row house owned by the back-to-nature, Afrocentric cult known as Move. The bombing killed eleven people and started a fire that destroyed sixty other houses. At the center of the story is Cudjoe, a writer and exile who returns to his old neighborhood after spending a decade fleeing from his past, and his search for the lone survivor of the fire a young boy who was seen running from the flames. An impassioned, brutally honest journey through the despair and horror of life in urban America, "Philadelphia Fire isn't a book you read so much as one you breathe" (San Francisco Chronicle).
About the Author
John Edgar Wideman is the first writer to win the PEN/Faulkner Award twice, in 1984 for Sent for You Yesterday and in 1990 for Philadelphia Fire. His nonfiction book Brothers and Keepers received a National Book Critics Circle nomination, and his memoir Fatheralong was a finalist for the National Book Award. His most recent novel is Two Cities. He teaches at Baruch College, NYC.
Philadelphia Fire: A Novel,John Edgar Wideman,Mariner Books,061850964X,African Americans,Bombings,Fiction,Fiction - General,Fires,Literary,Wideman, John Edgar - Prose & Criticism,Fiction / Literary
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