Joshua Ferris

Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, this big, brilliant, profoundly observed novel by National Book Award Finalist Joshua Ferris explores the absurdities of modern life and one man's search for meaning. Paul O'Rourke is a man made of contradictions: he loves the world, but doesn't know how to live in it. He's a Luddite addicted to his iPhone, a dentist with a nicotine habit, a rabid Red Sox fan devastated by their victories, and an atheist not quite willing to let go of God. Then someone begins to impersonate Paul online, and he watches in horror as a website, a Facebook page, and a Twitter account are created in his name. What begins as an outrageous violation of his privacy soon becomes something more soul-frightening: the possibility that the online "Paul" might be a better version of the real thing. As Paul's quest to learn why his identity has been stolen deepens, he is forced to confront his troubled past and his uncertain future in a life disturbingly split between the real and the virtual. At once laugh-out-loud funny about the absurdities of the modern world, and indelibly profound about the eternal questions of the meaning of life, love and truth, TO RISE AGAIN AT A DECENT HOUR is a deeply moving and constantly surprising tour de force.

A Novel

To Rise Again at a Decent Hour

The first collection of short stories from the critically acclaimed, prize winning author of To Rise Again at a Decent Hour. Few writers encapsulate the deeply felt yearnings, heartbreaking absurdity, and redemptive humor of life quite like Joshua Ferris. Full of the keenly observed, mordant wit that characterizes his beloved, award-winning novels, the stories in THE DINNER PARTY are about people searching for answers in the aftermath of life's emotional fissures--those abrupt, sometimes violent, moments that change lives forever. From a disastrous gathering that exposes the cracks in a seemingly solid relationship, to a retired widower looking for connection in all the wrong places, to a man pathologically incapable of having a normal social interaction with his mover, these hilarious and profound stories confirm Ferris's stature as one of our most dazzingly talented contemporary authors.

Stories

The Dinner Party

From a National Book Award Finalist comes a novel about a modern American family and a man on a secret mission to uncover the world's hidden truths--until his two lives come crashing together. Someone is telling the story of the life of Charlie Barnes, and it doesn't appear to be going well. Too often divorced, discontent with life's compromises and in a house he hates, this lifelong schemer and eternal romantic would like out of his present circumstances and into the American dream. But when the twin calamities of the Great Recession and a cancer scare come along to compound his troubles, his dreams dwindle further, and an infinite past full of forking paths quickly tapers to a black dot. Then, against all odds, something goes right for a change: Charlie is granted a second act. With help from his storyteller son, he surveys the facts of his life and finds his true calling where he least expects it--in a sacrifice that redounds with selflessness and love--at last becoming the man his son always knew he could be. A Calling for Charlie Barnes is a profound and tender portrait of a man whose desperate need to be loved is his downfall, and a brutally funny account of how that love is ultimately earned.

A Calling for Charlie Barnes

They spend their days - and too many of their nights - at work. Away from friends and family, they share a stretch of stained carpet with a group of strangers they call colleagues. There's Chris Yop, who is clinging to his ergonomic chair; Lynn Mason, the boss, whose breast cancer everyone pretends not to talk about; Carl Garbedian, secretly taking someone else's medication; Marcia Dwyer, whose hair is stuck in the eighties; and Benny, who's just- well, just Benny. Amidst the boredom, redundancies, water-cooler moments, meetings, flirtations and pure rage, life is happening, to their great surprise, all around them. Then We Came To The End is about sitting all morning next to someone you corss the road to avoid at lunch. It's the story of your life, and mine. 'Outstanding . . . incisive, urgent, funny and snappily written' Sunday Times 'Very funny, intense and exhilarating . . . For the first time in fiction, it has truly captured the way we work' The Times 'As dazzling as Franzen's The Corrections and as confident as Tartt's The Secret History . . . Exceptional, very Funny' Daily Telegraph 'Slick, sophisticated and very funny, Ferris's cracking debut has modern Everyman fighting for his identity in an increasingly impersonal world' Daily Mail

Then We Came to the End

Tim Farnsworth is a handsome, healthy man, ageing with the grace of a matin�e idol. He loves his work. He loves his family. He loves his kitchen. And then one day he stands up and walks out on all of it. He cannot stop walking. And, as his body propels him relentlessly forward, deep into the unfamiliar outer reaches of the city, he begins to realise he is moving further and further from his old self, seemingly unable to turn back and retrieve what he has lost. In his extraordinary novel Joshua Ferris delineates with great tenderness and a rare and inimitable wit the devastating story of a life taken for granted and what happens when that life is torn away without explanation or warning. The Unnamed is no less than a shimmering reflection of our times, of the lives we aspire to and the terrifying realisation of what is beyond our control.

The Unnamed

The Fragments

The Dinner Partyimmerses us in the comic and strange realities of modern life, as we journey through the lives of the unlovable, the unloved, and those who love too much- Jack, who nervously tries to befriend the surly removal man by buying him a latte and a croissant; Sarah, who endlessly imagines how her evening would have been better had she only chosen a different restaurant; Joe, who spends a night alone at the office and surreptitiously starts to rearrange his colleagues' belongings; Dom, who can't stop listening to strangers' conversations, while his wife is increasingly silent. And then there is the dinner party, bringing the countless decisions and regrets of a single evening painfully to life.

The Dinner Party and Other Stories

Makul bir saatte yeniden uyansam

Ve Isimiz Bitti

Invito a cena

The National Book Award finalist and debut novel by the bestselling author of The Dinner Party: "A readymade classic of the office-novel genre. . . . A truly affecting novel about work, trust, love, and loneliness." --Seattle Times No one knows us quite the same way as the men and women who sit beside us in department meetings and crowd the office refrigerator with their labeled yogurts. Every office is a family of sorts, and the ad agency Joshua Ferris brilliantly depicts in his debut novel is family at its strangest and best, coping with a business downturn in the time-honored way: through gossip, pranks, and increasingly frequent coffee breaks. With a demon's eye for the details that make life worth noticing, Joshua Ferris tells a true and funny story about survival in life's strangest environment--the one we pretend is normal five days a week.

A Novel -- 10th Anniversary Edition

La fragilità della condizione maschile odierna può vantare, com’è noto, una sterminata letteratura da parte delle scienze sociali, e infinite tesi che pretendono di venirne a capo. Nulla, però, piú della narrativa contemporanea è in grado di restituire la crudezza e, nello stesso tempo, l’amabilità e la futilità di questo fenomeno. Con E poi siamo arrivati alla fine, Non conosco il tuo nome e Svegliamoci pure, ma a un’ora decente, le sue precedenti, ac-clamate opere, Joshua Ferris ha mostrato un’abilità non comune nel penetrare nei risvolti comici e tragici di questa fragilità, nar-rando di uomini ossessionati da energiche boss donne nei luoghi di lavoro, di affermati professionisti che decidono di lasciarsi in-dietro il fulgore soffocante e irresistibile della felicità coniugale e familiare, di uomini di successo che scoprono improvvisamente che la loro insignificante esistenza è destinata a trascinarsi nell’abisso come una pallina da golf sull’orlo della buca. Nei racconti che compongono questo Invito a cena, libro accolto al suo apparire negli Stati Uniti da un’entusiastica accoglienza da parte della critica, la fragilità maschile viene mostrata all’opera soprattutto nell’intricato rapporto tra i sessi che caratterizza la nostra epoca, con esiti altrettanto esilaranti e, nello stesso tempo, crudeli. Che si tratti di un uomo che rimprovera alla moglie la balordaggine delle sue amicizie, salvo poi scoprire che erano proprio quelle a reggere le sorti del suo matrimonio; o di un uomo maturo che l’inaspettata vedovanza trascina nell’ipocondria dapprima e poi nella sorprendente frequentazione di una prostituta; o anche di un aspirante sceneggiatore che, al party in piscina di una famosa autrice televisiva, si lascia andare a un crescendo inarrestabile di paranoie, è la relazione uomo-donna che in queste pagine si offre nell’intensità delle sue passioni e, ad un tempo, nell’incomunicabilità e inaffidabilità proprie della nostra epoca. Undici storie emozionanti, originali e comiche, esplorate tutte attraverso la prosa dinamica e la feroce satira che hanno reso Jo-shua Ferris uno dei piú importanti scrittori contemporanei. «Traboccante, divertente, intelligente e dinamico. Ferris è un candidato assolutamente degno per il Booker Prize o per qualsiasi altro importante premio». Janet Maslin, New York Times «È un piacere osservare come questo scrittore spazi, con abilità, dai registri ampiamente giocosi della commedia a un’autentica profondità spirituale». Wall Street Journal «Ferris è riuscito a fondere la sapiente satira del suo primo libro con la disillusione disperata del secondo. l risultato è un’opera imperdibile, un Ferris al suo meglio». Washington Post

Una grande agenzia di pubblicità sulle rive dell'immenso lago di fronte a Chicago, nel cuore dei grattacieli più antichi d'America. Qui, tra open space e cubicoli, tra computer e stampanti, si svolge la commedia umana di un gruppo di giovani spregiudicati e sognatori, cinici e brillanti, che ogni mattina, fatalmente, si incontra nello stesso luogo: in ufficio. Carl, Karen, Benny, Amber, Jim, sanno tutto di tutti. Sanno che Tom è pazzo, e che Lynn, il boss, ha un tumore al seno. Sanno che il vecchio Brizz se la passa male ed è finito nella classifica di Quale vip muore prima, anche se non è una celebrità. Sanno chi è nelle grazie del capo e chi verrà fatto fuori. Sanno tutto di tutti perché quell'ufficio è ormai la loro vita. E in quelle stanze, tra corridoi e scrivanie, scopriamo un mondo, l'universo intero della nostra gioia e del nostro scontento, l'affetto e la competizione, lo struggimento e il disprezzo, il desiderio e la privazione, in fondo la vita stessa, perché nessuno ci conosce davvero quanto le donne e gli uomini che ogni giorno ci siedono accanto.

E poi siamo arrivati alla fine

Jonathan Safran Foer

Roxane Gay

Jonathan Ames

Joyce Carol Oates

Billy Collins

Gary Shteyngart

Lee Child

Valeria Luiselli

Alain Mabanckou

Sloane Crosley

Jonathan Coulton

Aimee Mann

Lee Child's street corner. Gary Shteyngart's bed. Joyce Carol Oates's classroom. Roxane Gay's dream house. Billy Collins's New York City. Aimee Mann and Jonathan Coulton's kitchen. Valeria Luiselli's writing desk. Sloane Crosley's conference call. Alain Mabanckou's Department of Human Resources. Jonathan Ames's shrink's office. Jonathan Safran Foer's Genius Bar. Joshua Ferris's America.What do these places have in common? More than might initially meet the eye. They're the spaces¿real or imagined¿where thirteen remarkably talented and original voices do their work. These writers, poets, and singer-songwriters come together to give us a guided tour through the places that inspire them. There's mystery here. Dark confessions. Office crushes. Tales of deals made, careers built and broken, and the love and dread and hope of being at work.Everyone works someplace. This group of authors has created a place that is by turns hilarious, illuminating, shocking, wonderful. It might make you cry. It will certainly make you laugh. And you might never see your own office in the same (fluorescent?) light again.

A Story of Love, Suspense and Paperclips

Speaking of Work

Vor allem kann man davonlaufen. Nur nicht vor den Dämonen des eigenen Ichs Der Anwalt Tim Farnsworth hat alles, was man sich wünschen kann im Leben: Er ist glücklich verheiratet, liebt seine pubertierende Tochter, hat ein schönes Haus und ziemlich viel Erfolg in seinem Beruf. Und doch steht er eines Tages auf und geht fort. Nicht, weil er möchte, sondern weil er muss, weil ihn etwas treibt, das stärker ist als sein Körper, sein Geist und sein Wille. Er macht sich auf den Weg hinaus ins Freie, ohne Rücksicht auf Wetter, Familie oder Job, läuft oft meilenweit, bevor er wieder zu sich kommt. Und er kann sich nicht erklären, warum er zerstört, was er am meisten liebt.

Joshua Ferris

Books

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