Michael Bible

In Harmony, North Carolina, the earth is soaked in blood. Lynchings and hangings; mobs and vigilante justice. But all of that is just whispers of history, lost to time. The summer of 2000 was different. Iggy in the Baptist church. Twenty-five people dead. This, Harmony couldn't forget. Told in a kaleidescope of timelines and voices, Michael Bible takes the reader through all of the dimensions of one tragedy. The victims and witnesses, perpetrators and condemned comingle and evolve as the passage of time works its way through their lives.

The Ancient Hours

Mentre tutti sono raccolti in preghiera, dall’ultima fila Iggy avanza verso il centro della chiesa. Trema, e la benzina che ha portato con sé per darsi fuoco – come quei bonzi che ha visto in rete – si rovescia. Il fiammifero acceso gli cade di mano. Nel rogo muoiono venticinque fedeli. Diciotto anni più tardi gli abitanti di Harmony, una cittadina del Sud degli Stati Uniti, ancora si portano dentro quel lutto, ancora – come un antico coro – si interrogano e commentano l’accaduto. La loro versione si alterna a quella di altre figure direttamente coinvolte o appena sfiorate dalla tragedia, mentre su tutto si impone, ipnotico e straziante, il racconto del colpevole, rinchiuso nel braccio della morte. Ora che l’esecuzione si avvicina, a Iggy resta solo il rifugio nel sogno – o nel ricordo – di un’altra vita, di mille altre vite. Da dove è scaturita quella decisione estrema e inconsulta? Che cosa gli ha sconvolto la mente? Gli antidolorifici che sniffava, l’alcol e l’eroina? L’amore «selvaggio, cosmico e strano» per Cleo, o quello per Paul, l’amico scomparso «come un temporale che passa sopra la campagna e si dilegua in un batter d’occhio»? O piuttosto quel dolore segreto, quel tedio insopportabile, quello sgomento di fronte a un universo infettato da un oscuro morbo di cui solo loro tre sembravano avere consapevolezza? Michael Bible è un giovane scrittore ma ha già un mondo e una voce, che modula con sapienza per prestarla alle sue creature dolenti, dando vita a una ballata visionaria, calibratissima, carica di poesia concreta e di accenti biblici, con la quale sembra essersi già guadagnato un posto fra i grandi narratori del Sud americano.

L’ultima cosa bella sulla faccia della terra

Fiction. This is your new favorite book. You will read it on highways and down in the sand of a deserted island. You will learn Michael Bible's striking and gentle language, which booms and slithers like silver percussion, and ride elevators in the forest, this horse named Forever. You will use secret cameras for spying and come to know COWBOY MALONEY'S ELECTRIC CITY and see single bolts of lightning raising up from the ground. You will know this book is not like anything. It's a book of brightness and purpose. It's a book that's pure and liquid and fuel. This is your new favorite book. Get ready. "Michael Bible may have hit what a lot of us were trying, a singular new voice for CEOs to slackers. He's so open, so easy, so fluid, you'll smile with joy turning every page"—Barry Hannah.

Cowboy Maloney's Electric City

“You’ll smile with joy turning every page.” —Barry Hannah Reverend Maloney isn’t the world’s greatest spiritual advisor. He drinks gin out of his coffee cup and has sex dreams about the Holy Ghost. His best friend Eli isn’t perfect either, but he’s a chess genius, so Maloney sees an opportunity in traveling around the country so Eli can win major chess tournament after chess tournament (while Maloney pockets Eli’s winnings). Chased by a blind headhunter named Jack Cataract, the Reverend, his girlfriend, and Eli race across North America and around New York City, from Washington Square Park to a jetski ride to the great green gown of Lady Liberty. In this uproariously funny, unabashedly sexy, and highly-anticipated novel, Michael Bible delivers a devastating story about the American South, chess tournaments, and one debaucherous reverend’s struggle with spirituality. In the spirit of Nicholson Baker and Barry Hannah, Sophia is an adventure with a raunchy and obviously flawed cast of characters, written with enormous heart. From the Trade Paperback edition.

Sophia

“A singular new voice . . . [Michael Bible] is so open, so easy, so fluid, you’ll smile with joy turning every page.” —Barry Hannah After an adolescent prank leads to a stranger’s death, Alvis Maloney rambles westward. He lands in a small North Carolina town and falls in love—in love with his neighbor Molly, with a lonesome quarterback called Miles, with a whole community of enduring misfits and losers. But at the same time, another life takes shape in Maloney’s dreamlike visions: a horse named Forever, a princess with hypochondria, and an electric city that’s always just out of reach. As these two promises of home fight for their hold on Maloney, the story careens toward disaster, and in the end Maloney must choose between love and redemption. From the author Electric Literature called “one of the most interesting and exciting new novelists in years,” Michael Bible’s Empire of Light blooms with mystical imagination and a hopeful heart.

Michael Bible

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