Exiles in the Garden

Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009. 279 pages; 24 cm. SIGNED. Boldly signed by the author on the title page, no dedication. A fine copy of the first printing. Dust jacket protected in a mylar book cover. "'One of the most astute writers of American fiction' (New York Times Book Review) delivers the resonant story of Alec Malone, a senators son who rejects the family business of politics for a career as a newspaper photographer. Alec and his Swiss wife, Lucia, settle in Georgetown next door to a couple whose emigre gatherings in their garden remind Lucia of all the things Americans are not. She leaves Alec as his career founders on his refusal of an assignment to cover the Vietnam War--a slyly subversive fictional choice from Ward Just, who was himself a renowned war correspondent. At the center of the novel is Alec's unforeseen reckoning with Lucias long-absent father, Andre Duran, a Czech living out the end of his life in a hostel called Goya House. Duran's career as an adventurer and antifascist commando is everything Alecs is not. The encounter forces Alec to confront just how different a life where things-- 'terrible things, terrible things'--happen is from a life where nothing much happens at all. / WARD JUST is the author of fifteen previous novels, including the National Book Award finalist Echo House, A Dangerous Friend, winner of the Cooper Prize for fiction from the Society of American Historians, and An Unfinished Season, winner of the Chicago Tribune Heartland Award and a finalist for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize. He lives with his wife, Sarah Catchpole." - Publisher.. SIGNED. 1st. Hardcover. Fine/Fine. 8vo. Collectible.