In Partial Disgrace (American Literature (Dalkey Archive))

The long-awaited magnum opus of one of the United States's "best, and best-neglected" authors, critics, and tastemakers, In Partial Disgrace chronicles the troubled history of a small Central European nation through the memoirs of its most flamboyant exile: a writer, triple-agent, and bon vivant whose childhood in the fairy-tale house of his dog-trainer father and pagan goddess mother are themselves "translated and edited" by a retired Allied spy. Splitting the difference between the philosophical fictions of Thomas Mann and the fever-dream playfulness of Nabokov, and featuring a cast of characters, breadth of insight, and degree of stylistic legerdemain to put most contemporary novels to shame, In Partial Disgrace may be the last great work to issue from the generation that changed American letters in the '60s and '70s.