Look Homeward, Angel

"Home, sweet home" - wie nah ist die Familie Gant zuweilen ihrem Glück! Wenn sich die Kinderschar vollzählig an der üppig gedeckten Tafel einfindet, könnte das häusliche Leben kaum inniger sein. Doch der Schein trügt. Hinter den Ritualen der Zusammengehörigkeit lauern Missgunst, Überdruss, tiefe Entzweiung: hier der Vater, ein jähzorniger Alkoholiker, dort die Mutter, eine berechnende Krämerseele, die das familiäre Idyll ihrer unstillbaren Raffgier opfert. Und in diese Verhältnisse wird der Romanheld Eugene Gant hineingeboren. Als Letztgeborener muss er sich von vornherein damit abfinden, unter seinesgleichen ein Fremdling zu sein ...

The first novel by the great American novelist, now the subject of a major new film, Genius , starring Jude Law, Colin Firth, Dominic West and Nicole Kidman. Eugene Gant, born in 1900 to hard-drinking stone-cutter Oliver and entrepreneurial Eliza, grows up in small-town America. Both lonely outsider and passionate chronicler of American life, Eugene experiences upheaval and family tragedy before coming to realise that he must leave his home behind if he is to forge his own path in the world. This is the dazzlingly rich first novel from one of the most brilliant and mercurial voices of early twentieth-century, who was a major influence on writers including Hunter S. Thompson, Ray Bradbury, Philip Roth and the Beats. This new edition includes an introduction by Elizabeth Kostova, author of The Historian . Wolfe's second novel, Of Time and the River , continuing the story of Eugene Gant, is also now available in Penguin Classics.

Autorentext

Thomas Wolfe (Author)
Thomas Wolfe was born in North Carolina in 1900. His mother ran a boarding house and his father a gravestone business; Wolfe was the youngest of their eight children. His first novel, Look Homeward, Angel, was published in 1929, followed by Of Time and the River in 1935, both heavily revised by his influential editor, Max Perkins. Wolfe died in 1938 from tuberculosis, aged thirty-seven.

Elizabeth Kostova (Introducer)
Elizabeth Kostova is the author of the novels The Historian (2005) and The Swan Thieves (2010).

Zusammenfassung
Eugene Gant, born in 1900 to hard-drinking stone-cutter Oliver and entrepreneurial Eliza, grows up in small-town America. Both lonely outsider and passionate chronicler of American life, Eugene experiences upheaval and family tragedy before coming to realise that he must leave his home behind if he is to forge his own path in the world.