Quattordici storie di uomini e donne e famiglie dentro la vita americana, in lotta con pregiudizi e solitudine, feriti dalla perdita dell'amore o dall'impossibilità di accettarlo - ma capaci di trovare un'estrema luminosa redenzione. Dubus descrive il microcosmo di ciò che alla gente succede mentre parla o cammina, l'azione emotiva dentro una semplice azione. Una continua ricerca di luce e salvezza, di uno spiraglio in quelle che sono le barriere umane, a costo di mentire a se stessi.

After their parents divorced in the 1970s, Andre DubusIII and his three siblings grew up with their overworkedmother in a depressed Massachusetts mill town saturatedwith drugs and everyday violence. Nearby, his father, aneminent author, taught on a college campus and took thekids out on Sundays. The clash between town and gown,between the hard drinking, drugging, and fighting of "townies"and the ambitions of students debating books and ideas,couldn't have been more stark. In this unforgettable memoir,acclaimed novelist Dubus shows us how he escaped the cycleof violence and found empathy in channeling the stories ofothers—bridging, in the process, the rift between his fatherand himself.

Sotto la scorza di un'America dura, nitida e fredda, brucia il fuoco di queste storie di piccoli uomini e grandi paure. Storyteller attuale e vigoroso, Dubus sa svelare la vita nascosta delle persone di tutti i giorni e il loro cercare, malamente ma ininterrottamente, la luce. Matrimoni e divorzi, odio e amore, coppie che non parlano più e genitori che cercano disperatamente di riprendere a farlo con i propri figli: nella sterminata provincia americana prendono vita personaggi potenti e profondamente turbati da desideri e affetti, peccati e inesorabili vendette.

A former colonel in the Iranian Air Force yearns to restore his family's dignity. A recovering alcoholic and addict down on her luck struggles to hold on to the one thing she has left. And her lover, a married cop, is driven to extremes to win her love.

In this masterpiece of American realism and Shakespearean consequence, Andre Dubus III's unforgettable characters—people with ordinary flaws, looking for a small piece of ground to stand on—careen toward inevitable conflict, their tragedy painting a shockingly true picture of the country we live in today.

The author of House of Sand and Fog describes his childhood in a depressed Massachusetts mill town saturated with drugs and crime and his weekly visits with his father, an eminent author who taught on a college campus. Simultaneous. Book available.

€ 100,70

The author of House of Sand and Fog describes his childhood in a depressed Massachusetts mill town saturated with drugs and crime and his weekly visits with his father, an eminent author who taught on a college campus. Simultaneous. Book available.

€ 25,50

After their parents divorced in the 1970s, Andre Dubus III and his three siblings grew up with their exhausted working mother in a depressed Massachusetts mill town saturated with drugs and everyday violence. To protect himself and those he loved, Andre started pumping iron and learned to use his fists so well that he became the kind of man who could send others to the hospital with one punch, and did. Irresistibly drawn to stand up for the underdog, he was on a fast track to getting killed—or killing someone else.

Nearby, his father, an eminent author, taught on a college campus and took the kids out on Sundays. The clash of worlds between town and gown, between the hard drinking, drugging, and fighting of “townies” and the ambitions of well-fed students debating books and ideas, couldn't have been more stark or more difficult for a son to communicate to a father. Only by finally putting pen to paper himself did young Andre come into his own, discovering the power of empathy in channeling the stories of others—and ultimately bridging the rift between his father and himself.

An unforgettable book, Townie is a riveting and profound meditation on physical violence and the failures and triumphs of love.

Quando sono sola la notte - e mi piace esserlo - guardo fuori dalla finestra e capisco. Il nostro compito non è vivere grandi vite, il nostro compito è capire e portare avanti le vite che abbiamo. Vedo che sorridi ancora. E hai ancora gli occhi umidi. Asciugateli in fretta, prima che le mie amiche pensino che è successo qualcosa di brutto.

Dopo il divorzio dei genitori, Andre Dubus III e i suoi tre fratelli crescono in un'ex cittadina industriale del Massachusetts piena di droga e violenza con la madre costretta a lavori precari e malpagati per mantenere la famiglia. Per proteggere sé stesso e quelli che ama, Andre deve imparare a difendersi e a usare i pugni e, dopo un lungo e faticoso allenamento costruito tutto sulla propria volontà, diventa così bravo che alla fine è uno di quelli che ti può stendere con un cazzotto e mandare diritto in ospedale. Irresistibilmente attratto da questo nuovo linguaggio, Andre rischia di venire ucciso o uccidere lui stesso. Intanto il padre, autore noto, insegna al college, frequenta giovani studentesse e porta fuori la domenica i figli per il pranzo. Il conflitto tra il mondo proletario delle periferie fatto di droga, alcol e pestaggi, e le ambizioni di studenti ben nutriti e coltivati sono rappresentate nel difficile rapporto tra padre e figlio che fa da sfondo e motore della narrazione. Solo quando Andre riuscirà a mettere su carta il proprio disagio e la propria sofferenza scoprendo il piacere di raccontare storie, quel dialogo interrotto con il padre troverà una nuova strada. "I pugni nella testa" è un romanzo autobiografico, toccante e potente, una muscolosa macchina della memoria che indaga sulle radici più profonde della violenza e sulla possibilità di trovare sé stessi attraverso il linguaggio dell'amore.

Quando sono sola la notte - e mi piace esserlo - guardo fuori dalla finestra e capisco. Il nostro compito non è vivere grandi vite, il nostro compito è capire e portare avanti le vite che abbiamo. Vedo che sorridi ancora. E hai ancora gli occhi umidi. Asciugateli in fretta, prima che le mie amiche pensino che è successo qualcosa di brutto.

In his stunning follow-up to the #1 best-selling House of Sand and Fog, Andre Dubus draws us into the lives of three deeply flawed, driven people whose paths intersect on a September night in Florida. April, a stripper, has brought her daughter to work at the Puma Club for Men. There she encounters Bassam, a foreign client both remote and too personal, and free with his money. Meanwhile, another man, AJ, has been thrown out of the club, and he's drunk and angry and lonely. From these explosive elements comes a relentless, raw, and page-turning narrative that seizes the reader by the throat with psychological tension, depth, and realism.

Hank e Jack sono amici dai tempi della scuola e tutti i pomeriggi si trovano a correre insieme dopo il lavoro. Hank non ha mai creduto nella monogamia e vive a modo suo il matrimonio con Edith; Jack ha sposato Terry, la ragazza più carina che avesse mai visto, ma ora crede di non amarla più. Anche per Edith e Terry il matrimonio non si è rivelato all'altezza delle aspettative. Per tutti il tradimento sembra la via di fuga più facile, ma quella che inizia come un'eccitante evasione trascina con sé un intricato groviglio di dubbi, ripicche e gelosia. Con la precisione di un chirurgo, Dubus affronta la complessità del matrimonio scegliendo di ripercorrere, in diversi momenti, la vita di due giovani coppie indissolubilmente legate. Tre racconti, quattro punti di vista a comporre un'unica storia di amori imperfetti.

In these three stories—two of which form the basis of the award-winning film We Don't Live Here Anymore—literary master Andre Dubus traces the lives of two couples who married too young, and who are intricately entwined by love and friendship, jealousy and understanding.
Hank and Jack have been best friends since high school. Hank married Edith, the prettiest girl Jack had ever seen, and Jack married Terry, whom he thinks he may no longer love. But Hank and Edith's adultery didn't begin or end with Jack and Terry. Moving, perceptive, rendered in clear-eyed prose, We Don't Live Here Anymore maps with preternatural insight the often separate lands of love and marriage.

Kathy, a recovering alcoholic, seperated from her husband, fails to open a series of letters from the tax office. The State seizes her house and it is sold to Behrani, a former Iranian Air Force officer. For him, the house comes to represent a passport to the American dream, but not for Kathy.

Twelve stories written during a promising, abruptly ended career illuminate the lives of doomed and despairing brawlers, murderers, drunkards, and demented husbands and wives in West Virginia's mountain hollows. Reprint. 15,000 first printing.

The seven stories collected here–including “Killings,” the basis for Todd Field’s award-winning film In the Bedroom–showcase legendary writer Andre Dubus’s sheer narrative mastery in a book of quietly staggering emotional power.

A father in mourning contemplates the unthinkable as the only way to allay his grief. A boy must learn to care for his younger brother when their mother leaves the family. A young woman who has never lacked lovers despairs of ever finding love itself, and then makes an accidental discovery that brings her real joy. Culled from Dubus’s treasured collections Selected Stories and Dancing After Hours, these beautiful stories of people at pivotal moments in their lives are some of the most bewitching and profound in American fiction.

Passion and betrayal, violent desperation, ambivalent love that hinges on hatred, and the quest for acceptance by those who stand on the edge of society-these are the hard-hitting themes of a stunningly crafted first collection of stories by the bestselling author of House of Sand and Fog.

A vigilant young man working in a halfway house finds himself unable to defend against the rage of one of the inmates in the title story. In "White Trees, Hammer Moon," a man soon to leave home for prison finds himself as unprepared for a family camping trip in the mountains of New Hampshire as he has been for most things in his life. And in the award-winning "Forky," an ex-con is haunted by the punishment he receives just as he is being released into the world. With an incisive ability to inhabit the lives of his characters, Dubus travels deep into the heart of the elusive American dream.

With House of Sand and Fog, his National Book Award-nominated novel, Andre Dubus III demonstrated his mastery of the complexities of character and desire. In this earlier novel he captures a roiling time in American history and the coming-of-age of a boy who must decide between desire, ambition, and duty.

In the summer of 1967, Leo Suther has one more year of high school to finish and a lot more to learn. He's in love with the beautiful Allie Donovan who introduces him to her father, Chick — a construction foreman and avowed Communist. Soon Leo finds himself in the midst of a consuming love affair and an intense testing of his political values. Chick's passionate views challenge Leo's perspective on the escalating Vietnam conflict and on just where he stands in relation to the new people in his life. Throughout his — and the nation's — unforgettable "summer of love," Leo is learning the language of the blues, which seem to speak to the mourning he feels for his dead mother, his occasionally distant father, and the youth which is fast giving way to manhood.

The twenty-five luminous and intensely personal essays in this collection are, like Andre Dubus's celebrated short stories, a testament to the author's vulnerability, vision, and indestructible faith. Since losing one leg and the use of the other in a 1986 accident, Dubus has experienced despair, learned acceptance, and, finally, found joy in the sacramental magic of even the most quotidian tasks.
Whether he is writing of the relationship with his father, the rape of his beloved sister, his Catholic faith, the suicide of a gay naval officer, his admiration for fellow writers like Hemingway and Mailer, or the simple act of making sandwiches for his daughters' lunchboxes, Dubus cuts straight to the heart of things. Here we have a master at the height of his powers, an artist whose work "is suffused with grace, bathed in a kind of spiritual glow" (The New York Times Book Review).

A New York Times Notable Book of the Year

From a genuine hero of the American short story comes a luminous collection that reveals the seams of hurt, courage, and tenderness that run through the bedrock of contemporary American life. In these fourteen stories, Dubus depicts ordinary men and women confronting injury and loneliness, the lack of love and the terror of actually having it. Out of his characters' struggles and small failures--and their unexpected moments of redemption--Dubus creates fiction that bears comparison to the short story's greatest creators--Chekhov, Raymond Carver, Flannery O'Connor.



"A master of the short story...It's good to have Andre Dubus back. More than ever, he is an object of hope."--Philadelphia Inquirer


"Dubus's detailed creation of three-dimensional characters is propelled by his ability to turn a quiet but perfect phrase...[This] kind of writing raises gooseflesh of admiration."--San Francisco Chronicle

These twenty-three stories represent the best work of one of the finest and most emotionally revealing writers in America. Andre Dubus treats his characters--a bereaved father stalking his son's killer; a woman crying alone by her television late at night; a devout teenager writing in the coils of faith and sexuality; a father's story of limitless love for his daughter--with respect and compassion. He turns fiction into an act of witness. Books by Andre Dubus also in Vintage Contemporaries paperback: Dancing After Hours.



"Like some of the most satisfying storytellers of the past (Dubus has been compared to Chekhov), he is munificent, spinning out whole lifetimes and recounting events from many characters' viewpoints. For the lyricism and directness of his language, the richness and precision of his observations and the generosity of his vision, he is among the best."--Village Voice


"Dubus's characters resemble those of Raymond Carver...but the stories stand alone in their idiosyncratic spiritual cast, occasionally religious, more often expressive of devotion to the people he lives among."--New York Times Book Review