Inspired by the story of John Walker Lindh, the “American Taliban,” Whiting Award–winning author John Wray explores the circumstances that could impel a young American to abandon identity and home to become an Islamist militant.
Like many other eighteen-year-olds, Aden Sawyer is intently focused on a goal: escape from her hometown. Her plan will take her far from her mother’s claustrophobic house, where the family photos have all been turned to face the wall; far from the influence of her domineering father—a professor of Islamic studies—and his new wife.
Aden’s dream, however, is worlds removed from conventional fantasies of teen rebellion: she is determined to travel to Peshawar, Pakistan, to study Islam at a madrasa. To do so, she takes on a new identity, disguising herself as a young man named Suleyman. Aden fully commits to this new life, even burning her passport to protect her secret. But once she is on the ground, she finds herself in greater danger than she could possibly have imagined. Faced with violence, disillusionment, and loss, Aden must make choices that will test not only her faith but also her most fundamental understanding of who she is, and that will set her on a wild, fateful course toward redemption by blood. John Wray’s Godsend is a coming-of-age novel like no other.
In his ambitious and fiercely inventive new novel, The Lost Time Accidents, John Wray takes us from turn-of-the-century Viennese salons buzzing with rumors about Einstein's radical new theory to the death camps of World War Two, from the golden age of postwar pulp science fiction to a startling discovery in a Manhattan apartment packed to the ceiling with artifacts of modern life.
Haunted by a failed love affair and the darkest of family secrets, Waldemar 'Waldy' Tolliver wakes one morning to discover that he has been exiled from the flow of time. The world continues to turn, and Waldy is desperate to find his way back-a journey that forces him to reckon not only with the betrayal at the heart of his doomed romance but also the legacy of his great-grandfather's fatal pursuit of the hidden nature of time itself.
Part madcap adventure, part harrowing family drama, part scientific mystery--and never less than wildly entertaining--The Lost Time Accidents is a bold and epic saga set against the greatest upheavals of the twentieth century.
Early one morning in New York City, Will Heller, a sixteen-year-old paranoid schizophrenic, gets on an uptown B train alone. Will is on a mission to save the world from global warming—to do it, though, he'll need to cool down his own body first. And for that he'll need one willing girl.
Lowboy tells the story of Will's odyssey through the city's tunnels, back alleys, and streets in search of Emily Wallace, his one great hope. It also follows his mother, Violet Heller, as she tries desperately to find her son before psychosis claims him completely. Violet is joined by Ali Lateef, a missing-persons specialist, who learns over the course of the day that more is at stake than the recovery of a runaway teen: Will Heller has a chilling case history, and Violet—beautiful, enigmatic, and as tormented as her son—harbors a secret that Lateef will discover at his own peril.
Set in the American South in the years before and during the Civil War, John Wray’s hypnotic novel is at once a crime story, a bravura work of historical fiction, and a fire-and-brimstone meditation on American credulity and corruption.
Thaddeus Morelle’s followers call him “the Redeemer.” Over the years he has led the Island 37 Gang from stealing horses to stealing slaves in an enterprise so nefarious that both the Union and Confederacy have placed a bounty on their heads. But now Morelle is dead, murdered by his puppet and protégé, Virgil Ball, who may rid himself of the Redeemer but can never be free of his Trade. Based on the true story of John Murrell, a figure once as infamous as Jesse James, Canaan’s Tongue is suspenseful and fiercely comic, a modern masterpiece of the American grotesque.
This extraordinary debut novel from Whiting Writers’ Award winner John Wray is a poetic portrait of a life redeemed at one of the darkest moments in world history.
Twenty years after deserting the army in the first world war, Oskar Voxlauer returns to the village of his youth. Haunted by his past, he finds an uneasy peace in the mountains–but it is 1938 and Oskar cannot escape from the rising tide of Nazi influence in town. He attempts to retreat to the woods, only to be drawn back by his own conscience and the chilling realization that the woman whose love might finally save him is bound to the local SS commander.Morally complex, brilliantly plotted, and heartbreakingly realized, The Right Hand of Sleep marks the beginning of an important literary career.
"Heady Metal," The New York Times Magazine
"Minister of Fear," The New York Times Magazine
"The Return of the One-Man Band," The New York Times Magazine
"The Making of Zach Galifianakis," The New York Times Magazine
"Janet Cardiff, George Bures Miller and the Power of Sound," The New York Times Magazine
"I Am The Real Nick Cave," The New York Times Magazine
“25 Songs That Tell Us Where Music Is Going: Mac DeMarco,” The New York Times Magazine
“The Top 25 Songs That Matter Right Now: Tierra Whack,” The New York Times Magazine
Godsend reviewed in The New Yorker
Godsend reviewed in The New York Times
The Lost Time Accidents reviewed in the New York Times
The Lost Time Accidents reviewed on NPR
Lowboy reviewed in The New Yorker
Lowboy reviewed in The New York Times Book Review
Canaan's Tongue review in The Washington Post Book World
The Right Hand of Sleep reviewed in The New York Times Book Review
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