Special edition of Paul Harding's Pulitzer Prize-winning debut
novel--featuring a new foreword by Marilynne Robinson and book club
extras inside
In this deluxe tenth anniversary edition, Marilynne Robinson introduces
the beautiful novel Tinkers, which begins with an old man who lies
dying. As time collapses into memory, he travels deep into his past,
where he is reunited with his father and relives the wonder and pain of
his impoverished New England youth. At once heartbreaking and life
affirming, Tinkers is an elegiac meditation on love, loss, and the
fierce beauty of nature.
The story behind this New York Times bestselling debut novel--the
first independently published Pulitzer Prize winner since A Confederacy
of Dunces received the award nearly thirty years before--is as
extraordinary as the elegant prose within it. Inspired by his family's
history, Paul Harding began writing Tinkers when his rock band broke
up. Following numerous rejections from large publishers, Harding was
about to shelve the manuscript when Bellevue Literary Press offered a
contract. After being accepted by BLP, but before it was even published,
the novel developed a following among independent booksellers from coast
to coast. Readers and critics soon fell in love, and it went on to
receive the Pulitzer Prize, prompting the New York Times to declare
the novel's remarkable success "the most dramatic literary Cinderella
story of recent memory."
That story is still being written as readers across the country continue
to discover this modern classic, which has now sold over half a million
copies, proving once again that great literature has a thriving and
passionate audience.
Paul Harding is the author of two novels about multiple generations
of a New England family: Enon and the Pulitzer Prize-winning
Tinkers. He teaches at Stony Brook Southampton.
