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Book Cover for: The Dying Grass: A Novel of the Nez Perce War, William T. Vollmann

The Dying Grass: A Novel of the Nez Perce War

William T. Vollmann

From the National Book Award-winning author of Europe Central - a dazzling fictional account of the epic fighting retreat of the Nez Perce Indians

In this fifth installment in his acclaimed Seven Dreams series of novels examining the collisions between Native Americans and European colonizers, William T. Vollmann tells the story of the epic fighting retreat of the Nez Perce Indians, with flashbacks to the Civil War.

Defrauded and intimidated at every turn, the Nez Perces finally went on the warpath in 1877, subjecting the U.S. Army to its greatest defeat since Little Big Horn the previous year, as they fled from northeast Oregon across Montana to the Canadian border. Vollmann's main character is not the legendary Chief Joseph but his pursuer, General Oliver Otis Howard, the brave, shy, tormented, devoutly Christian Civil War veteran. In this novel, we see him as commander, father, son, husband, friend, and killer.

Teeming with many vivid characters on both sides of the conflict, and written in an original style in which the printed page works as a stage with multiple layers of foreground and background, The Dying Grass is another mesmerizing achievement from one of the most ambitious writers of our time.

Book Details

  • Publisher: Penguin Books
  • Publish Date: Jul 26th, 2016
  • Pages: 1376
  • Language: English
  • Edition: undefined - undefined
  • Dimensions: 8.90in - 6.00in - 2.20in - 2.60lb
  • EAN: 9780143109402
  • Categories: Historical - GeneralLiteraryIndigenous - General (see also Indigenous Peoples of Turtle

About the Author

William T. Vollmann is the author of ten novels, including Europe Central, which won the National Book Award. He has also written four collections of stories, including The Atlas, which won the PEN Center USA West Award for Fiction, a memoir, and six works of nonfiction, including Rising Up and Rising Down and Imperial, both of which were finalists for the National Book Critics Circle Award. He is the recipient of a Whiting Writers Award and the Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His journalism and fiction have been published in The New Yorker, Harpers, Esquire, Granta, and many other publications.

More books by William T. Vollmann

Book Cover for: Europe Central: National Book Award Winner, William T. Vollmann
Book Cover for: You Bright and Risen Angels, William T. Vollmann
Book Cover for: Riding Toward Everywhere, William T. Vollmann
Book Cover for: The Ice-Shirt: Volume One of Seven Dreams: A Book of North American Landscapes, William T. Vollmann
Book Cover for: The Rainbow Stories, William T. Vollmann
Book Cover for: Whores for Gloria, William T. Vollmann
Book Cover for: Poor People, William T. Vollmann
Book Cover for: The Royal Family, William T. Vollmann
Book Cover for: The Rifles: Volume Six of Seven Dreams: A Book of North American Landscapes, William T. Vollmann
Book Cover for: Rising Up and Rising Down: Some Thoughts on Violence, Freedom and Urgent Means, William T. Vollmann
Book Cover for: The Atlas, William T. Vollmann
Book Cover for: Last Stories and Other Stories, William T. Vollmann
Book Cover for: Argall: The True Story of Pocahontas and Captain John Smith, William T. Vollmann
Book Cover for: Thirteen Stories and Thirteen Epitaphs, William T. Vollmann
Book Cover for: Butterfly Stories, William T. Vollmann
Book Cover for: Shadows of Love, Shadows of Loneliness: Volume One: Photographs: 1980-2020, William T. Vollmann

Praise for this book

Praise for The Dying Grass

"A novel of incredible significance and power. . .the reading experience of a lifetime. . .what Vollmann has done is nothing short of miraculous: He has taken a story whose ending is well known, yet he has made us wonder how it will end. . .A masterpiece that delivers us to the far shore of our past, a past that is still at war with the ghosts of its decisions. The Dying Grass is brilliant and alive."--David Treuer, The Washington Post

"A novel as involving and beautifully assembled as any this year. . .the writing has a pleasing aural quality that keeps the pages turning almost on their own...[the story] whistles ahead with the grace and speed of an arrow."--Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal

"Vollmann is one of the most idiosyncratic and challenging novelists at work today. The Dying Grass, like his other works, daringly pushes at the edges of the novel as a form while at the same time demanding that the reader sit up and pay attention." --Jane Smiley, The New York Times Book Review

"Nothing less than brilliant...in Vollmann's inventive telling these events are rendered with an unstinting detail and vigorous immediacy that feels startling and new. Swept along in streams of dialogue interspersed with vivid descriptive passages that call to mind the invention of Melville and the poetry of Whitman, the reader bears witness to the chaotic melee of pitched battle...the most remarkable thing about this novel is not how long it is, but how good it is." - The Seattle Times

"An uncompromising artistic achievement, a critical and heartfelt retelling of America's evolution." - The Philadelphia Inquirer

"[Vollmann's] artistic efforts and stamina are unparalleled...As in all his work, Vollmann manifests striking images...moments of grim humor...and poignancy." - The Portland Oregonian

"Stunning. . .The indefatigable, seeming inexhaustible Vollmann returns with another impossibly long - and peerless - book, this one an epic study of the Nez Perce War of 1877. . .Vollmann restores that history with an onrushing immediacy that takes on all the contours of a good Greek tragedy. . .Vollmann's vivid reconstruction is believable and achingly beautiful. . .a note-perfect incantation."-- Kirkus Reviews

"A colossal, ravishingly descriptive, adeptly omniscient novel...Vollmann's rampaging, reflective, absurd, ironic, tragic, and poetic epic is supported by a painstakingly compiled chronology, glossaries, and copious notes. Yet for all this documentation, this is a work of grand invention, creative empathy, and holistic interpretation.. . This virtuoso, polyphonic saga of invasion, resistance, forced exodus, and conquest flows, whirls, and mesmerizes with riverine dynamics, and it is as large, encompassing, and deeply felt as it needs to be to do justice to its momentous subject." --Booklist (starred review)

"Offers a panoramic view of the era and the decades leading up to it...Vollmann's prose is evocative and often lyrical, trailing down the page like free verse. . .To his credit, Vollmann is as interested in context and history as in storytelling...This massive novel is sometimes challenging, but ultimately rewarding." --Publishers Weekly (boxed review)