Patrick DeWitt

'An instant classic' DazedA nameless barman tends a decaying bar in Hollywood and takes notes for a book about his clientele. Initially, he is morbidly amused by watching the regulars roll in and fall into their nightly oblivion, pitying them and their loneliness. In hopes of uncovering their secrets and motives, he establishes tentative friendships with them. He also knocks back pills indiscriminately and treats himself to gallons of Jameson's. But as his tenure at the bar continues, he begins to lose himself, trapped by addiction and indecision. When his wife leaves him, he embarks on a series of squalidly random sexual encounters and a downward spiral of self-damage and irrational violence. To cleanse himself and save his soul, he attempts to escape...

Selected as a Washington Post Book of the Summer From bestselling and award-winning author Patrick deWitt comes a novel about an ordinary man who thought life's surprises were behind him - until a chance encounter changed everything Bob Comet is a retired librarian passing his solitary days surrounded by books in a mint-colored house in Portland, Oregon. One morning on his daily walk he encounters a confused elderly woman lost in a market and returns her to the senior center that is her home. Hoping to fill the void he's known since retiring, he begins volunteering at the center. Here, as a community of strange peers gathers around Bob, and following a happenstance brush with a painful complication from his past, the events of his life and the details of his character are revealed. Behind Bob Comet's straight man facade is the story of an unhappy child's runaway adventure during the last days of the Second World War, of true love won and stolen away, of the purpose and pride found in the librarian's vocation, and the pleasures of a life lived to the side of the masses. Comet's experiences are imbued with melancholy but also a bright, sustained comedy; he has a talent for locating bizarre and outsized players to welcome onto the stage of his life. With his inimitable verve, skewed humor, and compassion for the outcast, Patrick deWitt has written a wide-ranging and ambitious document of the introvert's condition. The Librarianist celebrates the extraordinary in the so-called ordinary life, and depicts beautifully the turbulence that sometimes exists beneath a surface of serenity.

A tragedy of manners from the Man Booker-shortlisted author of The Sisters Brothers `My favourite book of his yet' Maria Semple, author of Where'd You Go, Bernadette 'Pure joy' Mail on Sunday 'Buoyantly insane' New Yorker Frances Price is in dire straits. Scandals swirl around the recently widowed New York socialite, and her adult-aged, toddler-brained son Malcolm is no help. Cutting their losses, they grab their cat, Small Frank, and head for the exit. Paris becomes the backdrop for a giddy drive to self-destruction, helped along by a cast of singularly curious characters. Brimming with pathos, warmth and wit, French Exit is a riotous send-up of high society and a moving story of mothers and sons.

Patrick DeWitt a „véresen vicces westernregény", a Testvérlövészek után ezúttal groteszk kópéregénnyel lepi meg olvasóit, miközben egyszerre idézi meg a Grimm-mesék világát, Wes Andersont és a Monthy Python abszurd humorát, valamint a klasszikus pikareszkregények szellemes bölcsességét.  A nyakigláb és nagyotmondó siheder, Lucien Minor rettenetesen unja eseménytelen, léha életét aprócska falujában. Amikor váratlanul állásajánlatot kap egy távoli, rejtélyes falu kastélyából, nekivág hát az ismeretlennek. A fiúra az alfőudvarmesteri pozíció vár. E különös hangzású titulusnál csak maga a baljós látványt nyújtó kastély különösebb. A minden kalandra elszánt suhanc azonban, legyen szó akár rejtélyes éjszakai látogatóról, a kastély közelében örökösen lövöldöző katonákról, tolvajokról vagy agyafúrt hentesről, semmi elől nem hátrál meg. De vajon akkor is helyt áll-e, amikor egy váratlan és mindent felkavaró fordulat áll be a csaknem üres kastély életében?  A Kanadában született Patrick DeWitt Testvérlövészek című kötetét 2011-ben Man Booker-díjra jelölték, és a Publishers Weekly, az Amazon, valamint a Washington Post is az év egyik legjobb könyvének választotta. Bár DeWitt szerint Charles Portis vadnyugati klasszikusa, A félszemű volt rá leginkább hatással, a Testvérlövészek nem igazi westernregény, sokkal inkább a western díszletei között játszódó, a zsáner stílusjegyeit ötletesen imitáló burleszk. Az elsöprő kritikai fogadtatás után hét évet kellett várni DeWitt új regényére, a Lucien Minor kalandos utazására, amely a DeWitt-től már megszokott éleslátással és fekete humorral mesél az emberi lét legfontosabb kérdéseiről és az élet abszurditásáról.

Hermann Kermit Warm is going to die. Across 1000 miles of Oregon desert his assassins, the notorious Eli and Charlies Sisters, ride - fighting, shooting, and drinking their way to Sacramento. But their prey isn't an easy mark, the road is long and bloody, and somewhere along the path Eli begins to question what he does for a living - and whom he does it for. The Sisters Brothers pays homage to the classic Western, transforming it into an unforgettable ribald tour de force. Filled with a remarkable cast of losers, cheaters, and ne'er-do-wells from all stripes of life-and told by a complex and compelling narrator, it is a violent, lustful odyssey through the underworld of the 1850s frontier that beautifully captures the humor, melancholy, and grit of the Old West and two brothers bound by blood, violence, and love.