Twain & Stanley Enter Paradise

Oscar Hijuelos, James Langton

eAudio - 2015

From a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, a novel inspired by the friendship between famed writer and humorist Mark Twain and legendary explorer Sir Henry Morton Stanley—"surely among the best books Oscar ever wrote" (Paul Auster). Acclaimed novelist Oscar Hijuelos was fascinated by the Twain-Stanley connection and eventually began researching and writing a novel that used the scant historical record of their relationship as a starting point for a more detailed fictional account. It was a labor of love for Hijuelos; indeed, he was still revising the manuscript the day before his sudden passing in 2013. The resulting novel is a richly woven tapestry of people and events that is unique among the author's works. Ingeniously blendi...ng correspondence, memoir, and third-person omniscience to explore the intersection of these Victorian giants in a long-vanished world, the novel superbly channels two vibrant but very different figures, from their early days as journalists in... more