A World Lost: A Novel (Port William)

Wendell Berry is absolutely unique in American letters: a poet, novelist, essayist, and man of the land whose pastoral vision presents a ringing indictment of modern materialist society. A World Lost is the latest in Berry's fictional recreations of the lost world of Port William, Kentucky, in the 1940s, and it tells the story of Uncle Andrew Catlett, a womanizer and roisterer whose death in a trivial argument is retold by his grown nephew, Andy. Berry is uninterested in stylistic leaps or postmodern bravura: he is interested in a profound, well-told tale of honor and memory and community.