Description
In the Florida Everglades, gator-park Swamplandia! is in trouble. Its star performer, the great beauty and champion alligator-wrestler Hilola Bigtree, has succumbed to cancer, and Ava, her resourceful but terrified 13-year-old daughter, is left in charge with her two siblings. But Ava's sister has embarked on a romantic relationship with a ghost, her brother has defected to a rival theme park, and her father is AWOL. And then a mysterious figure called Bird Man guides Ava into a perilous part of the swamp called the Underworld, promising he can save both her sister and the park...
Swamplandia! was longlisted for the 2011 Orange Prize and shortlisted for the 2012 Pulitzer Prize and 2013 IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.
The eagerly anticipated, triumphant debut novel from the prize-winning author of St Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves. Longlisted for the 2011 Orange Prize and shortlisted for the 2013 IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.
About the Author
Karen Russell, a native of Miami, has been featured in the New Yorker's debut fiction issue, was chosen as one of Granta's Best Young American Novelists in 2007, and was most recently named one of New Yorker magazine's 20 Under 40. Her first collection of short stories, St Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves, was longlisted for the Guardian first book award.
Reviews
Ms Russell has produces a rich and humid world of spirits and dreams, buzzing mosquitoes and prehistoric reptiles, baby-green cocoplums and marsh rabbits, and musty old tomes about heroes and spells. With Ava she has created a goofy and self-conscious girl who is young enough to hope that all darkness has an answering lightness. Inevitably she must learn otherwise. Swamplandia! is ultimately about the aching beauties of youth - the way life begins with such dumb sweetness, while the lessons that give it meaning lurk around each bend like terrifying gators in a mossy fragrant swamp * The Economist *
The tale of the two flyaway sisters proves lyrically powerful as it maps the enchanted but dangerous worlds that young minds can conjure to deal with grief -- Stephen Amidon * Sunday Times *
It's a wonderfully extravagant, eccentric story by a brilliant young writer with an amazing imagination -- Kate Saunders * The Times *
I was looking forward to Swamplandia! and I wasn't disappointed. I found this novel beautifully written and very witty, yet often extremely sad too * TheBookBag.com *
The Miami-born writer renders the travails and delights of a...dreamlike world that leaves you intoxicated and slightly dishevelled * Monocle *
Awards
Short-listed for I.M.P.A.C. Dublin Award 2013 (Ireland).
Book Information
ISBN 9780099555834
Author Karen Russell
Format Paperback
Page Count 336
Imprint Vintage
Publisher Vintage Publishing
Weight(grams) 234g
Dimensions(mm) 198mm * 129mm * 20mm
