In the Distance - by Hernan Diaz

About the Book

"The first novel by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Trust, an exquisite and blisteringly intelligent novel of a young Swedish boy, separated from his brother, who becomes a legend and an outlaw A young Swedish immigrant finds himself penniless and alone in California. The boy travels East in search of his brother, moving on foot against the great current of emigrants pushing West. Driven back again and again, he meets naturalists, criminals, religious fanatics, swindlers, Indians, and lawmen, and his exploits turn him into a legend. Diaz defies the conventions of historical fiction and genre, offering a probing look at the stereotypes that populate our past and a portrait of radical foreignness"--

Book Synopsis

FINALIST FOR THE PULITZER PRIZE
FINALIST FOR THE PEN/FAULKNER AWARD
WINNER OF THE WHITING AWARD
WINNER OF THE SAROYAN INTERNATIONAL PRIZE FOR WRITING
WINNTER OF THE VCU CABELL FIRST NOVELIST AWARD
WINNER OF THE NEW AMERICAN VOICES AWARD
A PUBLISHERS WEEKLY TOP 10 BOOK OF THE YEAR

The first novel by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Trust, an exquisite and blisteringly intelligent story of a young Swedish boy, separated from his brother, who becomes a legend and an outlaw

A young Swedish immigrant finds himself penniless and alone in California. The boy travels east in search of his brother, moving on foot against the great current of emigrants pushing west. Driven back again and again, he meets criminals, naturalists, religious fanatics, swindlers, American Indians, and lawmen, and his exploits turn him into a legend. Diaz defies the conventions of historical fiction and genre, offering a probing look at the stereotypes that populate our past and a portrait of radical foreignness.

Review Quotes

Praise for In the Distance

"A gorgeously written novel that charts one man's growth from boyhood to mythic status as he journeys between continents and the extremes of the human condition." --Pulitzer Prize finalist citation

"Strange and transporting . . . In the Distance [is] an uncanny achievement." --The New York Times

"The prose is as unbroken as the horizon. . . . It's as if Herman Melville had navigated the American West, instead of the ocean." --The Nation

"This suspenseful novel is a potent depiction of loneliness, a memorable immigration narrative, and a canny reinvention of the old-school western." --Publishers Weekly

"Plainspoken and wildly, even cosmically, evocative . . . In the end the reader understands the country's twin potential for horror and hope." --Whiting Award citation

"A singular and deeply affecting portrait of one man's life in a rapidly changing world." --The Guardian

"An ambitious and thoroughly realized work of revisionist historical fiction." --Kirkus Reviews

"In the Distance did something new . . . raising important questions about cultural attitudes made evident by assumptions we make about art, particularly toward guns and immigrants. It's also just a great story." --The Paris Review

"[In the Distance] excels in creating a sense of disorientating foreignness. The result is richly drawn and something like Huckleberry Finn written by Cormac McCarthy: an adventure story as well as a meditation on the meaning of home." --The Sunday Times

"Stitched through with humor, this often-unpredictable novel will keep readers running along with every step of Håkan's odd escapades." --Booklist

"Diaz is bound to join ranks with Borges on the literary scene with this mythical personality, still at large in our consciousness long after we've put down the book." --BookPage

"While set in the American West, this is no conventional Western, as it turns the genre's ste­reotypes upside down, taking place on a frontier as much mythic as real with a main character traveling east." --Library Journal (starred review)

"[An] extraordinary epic tale of a lone man's journey into the heart of the American frontier." --Financial Times

About the Author

Hernan Diaz is the Pulitzer Prize-winning and New York Times best­selling author of Trust. His first novel, In the Distance, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, won the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing, was translated into more than twenty languages, and was one of Publishers Weekly's Top 10 books of the year and Literary Hub's twenty best novels of the decade. Trust was translated into more than thirty languages, received the Kirkus Prize, was longlisted for the Booker Prize, and was named one of the 10 Best Books of the Year by The New York Times, The Washington Post, NPR, and Time magazine, and it was one of The New Yorker's 12 Essential Reads of the Year and one of Barack Obama's favorite books of the year. His work has appeared in The Paris Review, Granta, The Atlantic, Harper's Magazine, McSweeney's, and elsewhere. He has received the John Updike Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Award, and a fellowship from the New York Public Library's Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers.