Robert Olen Butler

A direct view into the mind and craft of a literary master is offered in a collection of edited transcripts of the author's thought-provoking lectures that reimagine the process of writing as emotional rather than intellectual. Reprint.

The Process of Writing Fiction

From where You Dream

Robert Quinlan is a seventy-year-old historian, teaching at Florida State University, where his wife Darla is also tenured. Their life is a picture of domestic industry: cups of freshly ground coffee fuel Robert?s research and writing during the days, while in the evenings the conversation flows freely over home-cooked dinner and wine. The marriage is a happy enough one, but Robert?s relationship with his father, a veteran of World War II, is strained. William is coming to the end of his life, but reconciliation with his other son Jimmy, whose path diverged from the rest of the family at the outbreak of the Vietnam War, does not seem close at hand. When Robert meets a homeless man whom he takes to be a Vietnam veteran, the past is set to suffuse the present, and the enduring legacy of war on these characters revealed. Profound and poignant, Perfume River is a portrait of family, personal choice, and how war resonates through the American experience.

A Novel

Perfume River

“A novel that explores the darker side of human nature while making you laugh so hard iced tea almost comes out your nose” (Tampa Tribune). One of American literature’s brightest stars and author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain reimagines the underworld in an uproarious novel. Its main character, Hatcher McCord, is an evening news presenter who has found himself in Hell and is struggling to explain his bad fortune. He’s not the only one to suffer this fate—in fact, he’s surrounded by an outrageous cast of characters, including Humphrey Bogart, William Shakespeare, and almost all of the popes and most of the US presidents. The question may be not who is in Hell but who isn’t. McCord is living with Anne Boleyn in the afterlife but their happiness is, of course, constantly derailed by her obsession with Henry VIII (and the removal of her head at rather inopportune moments). One day McCord meets Dante’s Beatrice, who believes there is a way out of Hell, and the next morning, during an exclusive on-camera interview with Satan, McCord realizes that Satan’s omniscience, which he has always credited for the perfection of Hell’s torments, may be a mirage—and Butler is off on a madcap romp about good, evil, free will, and the possibility of escape. Butler’s depiction of Hell is original, intelligent, and fiercely comic, a book Dante might have celebrated. “I’ll never stop believing it: Robert Olen Butler is the best living American writer, period.” —Jeff Guinn, Fort Worth Star-Telegram

Hell

Late City

In the new Christopher Marlowe Cobb thriller, Robert Olen Butler's intrepid newspaperman-turned-spy tracks a German saboteur through the streets of the Great War-dimmed City of Lights

Paris in the Dark

As an alien visitor prepares to make contact with humanity on the eve of the millennium, he beams a tour bus onto his ship and communes with the outrageous assortment of passengers. Reprint.

Mr. Spaceman

April 1914 and war correspondent Christopher Marlowe 'Kit' Cobb arrives in Vera Cruz, Mexico, to cover the country's civil war. A passionate believer in the power of a free press, Kit is no mere observer. He assumes a false identity to pursue German diplomat Friedrich von Mensinger en route to a meeting with revolutionary leader Pancho Villa, and Cobb soon finds himself up to his neck in political intrigue. Along the way he's nearly shot by a mysterious sniper, joins forces with a double agent and falls in love with a headstrong young Mexican woman who may be mixed up in the revolutionary plot. An exciting tale of intrigue and espionage, Pulitzer Prizer winner Robert Olen Butler's powerful historical thriller is not to be missed. 'A thinking person's historical thriller' - Washington Post

The Hot Country

Presents sixty-two stories, each exactly 240 words in length, that reveal the thoughts and feelings of individuals whose heads have been severed from their bodies, including such characters as Medusa, Anne Boleyn, a chicken, and a man decapitated on the j

Stories

Severance

Set in contemporary New Orleans but working its way back in time, A Small Hotel chronicles the relationship between Michael and Kelly Hays, who have decided to separate after twenty-four years of marriage. The book begins on the day that the Hays are to finalize their divorce. Kelly is due to be in court, but instead she drives from her home in Pensacola, Florida, across the panhandle to New Orleans and checks into Room 303 at the Olivier House in the city’s French Quarter—the hotel where she and Michael fell in love some twenty-five years earlier and where she now finds herself about to make a decision that will forever affect her, Michael, and their nineteen-year-old daughter, Samantha. An intelligent, deeply moving, and remarkably written portrait of a relationship that reads as a cross between a romance novel and a literary page turner, A Small Hotel is a masterful story that will remind readers once again why Robert Olen Butler has been called the “best living American writer” (Jeff Guinn, Fort Worth Star-Telegram).

A Small Hotel

A 115-year-old man lies on his deathbed as the 2016 election results arrive, and revisits his life in this moving story of love, fatherhood, and the American century from Pulitzer Prize winner Robert Olen Butler. A visionary and poignant novel centered around former newspaperman Sam Cunningham as he prepares to die, Late City covers much of the early twentieth century, unfurling as a conversation between the dying man and a surprising God. As the two review Sam's life, from his childhood in the American South and his time in the French trenches during World War I to his fledgling newspaper career in Chicago in the Roaring Twenties and the decades that follow, snippets of history are brought sharply into focus. Sam grows up in Louisiana, with a harsh father, who he comes to resent both for his physical abuse and for what Sam eventually perceives as his flawed morality. Eager to escape and prove himself, Sam enlists in the army as a sniper while still underage. The hardness his father instilled in him helps him make it out of World War I alive, but, as he recounts these tales on his deathbed, we come to realize that it also prevents him from contending with the emotional wounds of war. Back in the U.S., Sam moves to Chicago to begin a career as a newspaperman that will bring him close to all the major historical turns of the twentieth century. There he meets his wife and has a son, whose fate counters Sam's at almost every turn. As he contemplates his relationships—with his parents, his brothers in arms, his wife, his editor, and most importantly, his son—Sam is amazed at what he still has left to learn about himself after all these years in this heart-rending novel from the Pulitzer Prize winner.

A direct view into the mind and craft of a literary master is offered in a collection of edited transcripts of the author's thought-provoking lectures that reimagine the process of writing as emotional rather than intellectual.

From where You Dream : the Process of Writing Fiction

The Pulitzer Prize–winning author’s “strange and finally beautiful tale about obsession and modern love” (Beth Kephart, The Baltimore Sun). Fair Warning is acclaimed novelist Robert Olen Butler’s enthralling glimpse into a Manhattan auction house that caters to the shopping pheromones of the rich and powerful. At age forty, the company’s charismatic star employee, Amy Dickerson, is capable of selling a Renoir painting of a pudgy nude for twice its value. Her customers are intoxicated by the objects they covet. And sometimes, such as when the dark and mysterious Trevor locks eyes with Amy as she closes an auction with “fair warning,” that object is Amy herself. Selected as a Book Sense 76 title and as a New York Times Summer Reading title, Fair Warning “is as frank and sassy as its heroine” (Amanda Heller, The Boston Globe). “Fair Warning deserves our praise, but its author also deserves our gratitude, for his continued risk-taking and stubbornly singular sensibility.” —Todd Kliman, The Washington Post

Fair Warning

A 115-year-old man lays on his deathbed as the 2016 election results arrive, and revisits his life in this moving story of love, fatherhood, and the American century from Pulitzer Prize winner Robert Olen Butler A visionary and poignant novel centered around former newspaperman Sam Cunningham as he prepares to die, Late City covers much of the early twentieth century, unfurling as a conversation between the dying man and a surprising God. As the two review Sam's life, from his childhood in the American South and his time in the French trenches during World War I to his fledgling newspaper career in Chicago in the Roaring Twenties and the decades that follow, snippets of history are brought sharply into focus. Sam grows up in Louisiana, with a harsh father, who he comes to resent both for his physical abuse and for what Sam eventually perceives as his flawed morality. Eager to escape and prove himself, Sam enlists in the army as a sniper while still underage. The hardness his father instilled in him helps him make it out of World War I alive, but, as he recounts these tales on his deathbed, we come to realize that it also prevents him from contending with the emotional wounds of war. Back in the US, Sam moves to Chicago to begin a career as a newspaperman that will bring him close to all the major historical turns of the twentieth century. There he meets his wife and has a son, whose fate counters Sam's at almost every turn. As he contemplates his relationships - with his parents, his brothers in arms, his wife, his editor, and most importantly, his son - Sam is amazed at what he still has left to learn about himself after all these years. Praise for Robert Olen Butler 'A thriller of great depth and intelligence' - Sunday Times 'A morally complex and beautifully written thriller with a delicately portrayed love story at its heart. A cut above' - Mail on Sunday 'Butler has not entered the significant and ever-growing canon of Vietnam-related fiction (he has long been a member) he has changed its composition forever' - Guardian 'One of the most profoundly creative voices in fiction today' - Ann Patchett 'A riveting thriller with impressively well-developed characters and such rich historical detail that is hard to put down' - Daily Express 'Beautiful, hilarious, horrifying and humane' - Dave Eggers

It is 1915 and Germany has allied itself with the Ottoman empire, persuading the caliphs of Turkey to declare a jihad on the British empire, as President Woodrow Wilson hesitates to enter the fray. War correspondent Christopher Marlowe Cobb has been tasked to follow Brauer, a German intellectual and possible secret service agent suspected of holding information vital to the war effort. As they travel on the Lusitania’s fateful voyage, Cobb becomes smitten with famed actress Selene Bourgani. Cobb soon realizes that this simple actress is anything but, as she harbours secrets that could add fuel to the already raging conflict. Surviving the night of the infamous German U-Boat attack, Cobb follows Selene and Brauer into the darkest alleyways of London and on to the powder keg that is Istanbul. He must use all the cunning he possesses to uncover Selene’s true motives, only to realize her hidden agenda could bring down some of the world’s most powerful leaders... 'A rollicking thriller with a keen eye for period detail' - Herald Scotland 'A thrilling, old-fashioned tale of intrigue and adventure that grabs you immediately with a historical timebomb' - Crime Fiction Lover

The Star of Istanbul

“A wrenching love story” about the relationship between a Vietnam veteran and a woman who was orphaned when Saigon fell, by a Pulitzer Prize-winning author (Chicago Tribune). This is an incandescent tale of modern love between a Vietnamese woman, orphaned in 1975 when Saigon fell to the Communists, and a Vietnam War veteran, returning from America to seek closure for decades-old emotional wounds. The more they nurture the love between them, the more they learn about each other, the more complex and dangerous their relationship becomes—and what follows conjures classical tragedy, infused with intense eroticism and with Butler’s reverence for Vietnamese mythology and history. The Deep Green Sea is a landmark work in the literature of love and war, from the acclaimed author of A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain. “A slim, erotic and fable-like...book that picks up on many of Butler's abiding themes—the legacy of the Vietnam War, the clash of Vietnam’s folklore and mysticism with American manners...[Butler is] a writer working to cast a spell.” —TheNew York Times Book Review “In a deceptively understated manner, Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Robert Olen Butler introduces us to a pair of improbable modern lovers . . . [he] plants the seeds of a tragedy that will haunt his readers long after they finish this lyrical love story.” —People

The Deep Green Sea

Tara L. Masih

Fiction. Poetry. Anthology. It takes many small things to make something big. Fifty-five acclaimed and emerging writers--including Emma Bolden, Ron Carlson, Kelly Cherry, Stuart Dybek, Blake Kimzey, Roland Leach, Bobbie Ann Mason, Diane Williams, and Hiromi Kawakami--have made the debut of THE BEST SMALL FICTIONS 2015 something significant, something worthwhile, and something necessary. Featuring spotlights on Pleiades journal and Michael Martone, this international volume--with Pulitzer Prize-winning author Robert Olen Butler serving as guest editor and award-winning editor Tara L. Masih as series editor--is a celebration of the diversity and quality captured in fiction forms fewer than 1,000 words. Small fictions by Adam O'Fallon Price, Anna Lea Jancewicz, Anya Yurchyshyn, Blake Kimzey, Bobbie Ann Mason, Brent Rydin, Casandra Lopez, Catherine Moore, Chris L. Terry, Claire Joanne Huxham, Dan Gilmore, Dan Moreau, Danielle McLaughlin, Dave Petraglia, David Mellerick Lynch, Dawn Raffel, Dee Cohen, Diane Williams, Emma Bolden, George Choundas, Hiromi Kawakami, J. Duncan Wiley, James Claffey, James Keegan, Jane Liddle, Jane Swan, Jeff Streeby, Jonathan Humphrey, Julia Strayer, Kathryn Savage, Kelly Cherry, Lauren Becker, Leesa Cross-Smith, Lindsey Drager, Lisa Marie Basile, Maureen Seaton, Michael Garriga, Michael Martone, Misty Ellingburg, Naomi Telushkin, Randall Brown, Roland Leach, Ron Carlson, Ron Riekki, Rusty Barnes, Seth Brady Tucker, Stefanie Freele, Stephen Orloske, Stuart Dybek, Valerie Vogrin, William Todd Seabrook, Yennie Cheung, Zack Bean.

The Best Small Fictions 2015

Robert Olen Butler's lyrical and poignant collection of stories about the aftermath of the Vietnam War and its impact on the Vietnamese was acclaimed by critics across the nation and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1993. A contemporary classic by one of America's most important living writers, this edition of A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain includes two subsequently published stories - 'Salem' and 'Missing' - that brilliantly complete the collection's narrative journey, returning to the jungles of Vietnam. 'Butler has not entered the significant and ever-growing canon of Vietnam-related fiction (he has long been a member) - he has changed its composition forever' - Guardian

Robert Olen Butler

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