About this ebook
“One of the very few good, ambitious and important novels to have been done by the writers of my generation.” —Norman Mailer
The lives of four Americans born between the world wars are intertwined to devastating effect in this gripping novel from one of the twentieth century’s most acclaimed authors.
Beautiful, sad Ellen Beniger; her younger brother, Tom, a scholar unhappily moonlighting as a TV writer; the athletic amorist Guy Cinturon; and tough little Eddie Bissle, ex-infantryman and Ellen’s secret lover, struggle to come to grips with the limits of their futures and the scars of their pasts as they enter middle age. Will the physical, emotional, and spiritual violations they have endured remain with them forever, or can they be healed?
As The Violated builds to its stunning climax, the story of four lost souls reveals heartbreaking truths about the dark side of post–World War II America.
The lives of four Americans born between the world wars are intertwined to devastating effect in this gripping novel from one of the twentieth century’s most acclaimed authors.
Beautiful, sad Ellen Beniger; her younger brother, Tom, a scholar unhappily moonlighting as a TV writer; the athletic amorist Guy Cinturon; and tough little Eddie Bissle, ex-infantryman and Ellen’s secret lover, struggle to come to grips with the limits of their futures and the scars of their pasts as they enter middle age. Will the physical, emotional, and spiritual violations they have endured remain with them forever, or can they be healed?
As The Violated builds to its stunning climax, the story of four lost souls reveals heartbreaking truths about the dark side of post–World War II America.
About the author
Vance Bourjaily (1922–2010) was born in Cleveland, Ohio. His father, a Lebanese immigrant, was a journalist, and his mother wrote romance novels. Raised in New York and Virginia, Bourjaily interrupted his studies at Bowdoin College to serve in the Second World War, first as an ambulance driver for the American Field Service and later as an army infantryman in occupied Japan. Legendary editor Maxwell Perkins commissioned Bourjaily’s debut novel, The End of My Life, while he was still in the army, and the book is widely considered to be one of the finest accounts of World War II in American literature. Bourjaily’s many other acclaimed works include The Violated, Confessions of a Spent Youth, and Brill Among the Ruins, a nominee for the National Book Award.
A longtime teacher at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and the University of Arizona, Bourjaily was the first director of the master of fine arts program in creative writing at Louisiana State University.
A longtime teacher at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and the University of Arizona, Bourjaily was the first director of the master of fine arts program in creative writing at Louisiana State University.
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