In The Distance
Hernan Diaz
Coffee House Press
<p><i><b>In the Distance</b>&nbsp;is a novel about radical foreignness – about being lost in a country that does not yet exist.&nbsp;</i></p><p>A young Swedish immigrant finds himself penniless and alone in California. The boy travels East in search of his brother, from whom he was separated in the crowds and chaos during their journey across the sea. Moving on foot against the great current of emigrants pushing West, he is driven back again and again, meeting naturalists, criminals, religious fanatics, swindlers, Native Americans and lawmen - and his exploits turn him into a legend.&nbsp; Determined to find Linus, Håkan moves against the tide of history, experiencing the Gold Rush and its effects, witnessing the formation of America and the betrayal of its dream.<br></p><p><b>Hernan Díaz</b>&nbsp;defies the conventions of historical fiction and genre (<i>travel narratives, the bildungsroman, nature writing, the Western</i>), offering a probing look at the stereotypes that populate our past and a portrait of radical foreignness.&nbsp; Just as its hero pushes against the tide, this widely acclaimed novel defies genre conventions - and "<i>upends the romance and mythology of America's Western experience and rugged individualism.</i>" (<b>Star Tribune</b>).<br></p><p><i>"Exquisite: assured, moving, and masterful, as profound and precise an evocation of loneliness as any book I've ever read."</i>&nbsp; &nbsp;-&nbsp;<b>Lauren Groff</b>, National Book Award-nominated author<br></p><p><b>Hernan Diaz</b><i>&nbsp;is a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, the author of two novels, translated into more than twenty languages, and of a book of essays. He has published stories and essays in Cabinet, The New York Times, The Kenyon Review, Playboy, Granta, McSweeney's, The Paris Review, and elsewhere.</i></p>