Jonas is fifteen when his family is killed during an errant U.S. military operation in an unnamed Middle Eastern country. An international relief organization sends Jonas to America, where he struggles to assimilate-adapting to his foster family, high school, a first love. Jonas meets Rose Henderson, the mother of the U.S. soldier responsible for saving his life. Christopher Henderson disappeared after the raid that destroyed Jonas's village, and Rose yearns to know the truth. Gradually, a shocking and painful secret emerges.
In spare, evocative prose, debut novelist Stephen Dau crafts a virtuosic novel about memory, the terrible choices made during war, and what happens when foreign disaster arrives at our own doorstep.
Jonas is fifteen when his family is killed during an errant U.S. military operation in an unnamed Middle Eastern country. An international relief organization sends Jonas to America, where he struggles to assimilate-adapting to his foster family, high school, a first love. Jonas meets Rose Henderson, the mother of the U.S. soldier responsible for saving his life. Christopher Henderson disappeared after the raid that destroyed Jonas's village, and Rose yearns to know the truth. Gradually, a shocking and painful secret emerges.
In spare, evocative prose, debut novelist Stephen Dau crafts a virtuosic novel about memory, the terrible choices made during war, and what happens when foreign disaster arrives at our own doorstep.
Stephen Dau is from Western Pennsylvania and lives in Brussels. He worked for ten years in post-war reconstruction and international development prior to studying creative writing, at Johns Hopkins University and Bennington, where he received an MFA. His work has appeared in McSweeney's, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, on MSNBC, and elsewhere. The Book of Jonas is his first novel.
A Kirkus Reviews “Best of 2012” fiction selection
A School Library Journal “Best of 2012” Adult fiction for Teens
selection
A Top-Ten favorite book of 2012 from Sam Sacks of The Wall Street
Journal
A Booklist Editor's Choice: Best Adult Books for Young
Adults, 2012
"Dau sketches Jonas brilliantly, empathetically, writing with
spare, clear language in the third person, a point of view
encompassing the distance necessary for emotional clarity. Rich
with symbolism, marvelously descriptive in language... Dau's novel
offers deeply resonating truths about war and culture, about family
and loss that only art can reveal. A literary tour de force."
- Kirkus Reviews (starred)
"A sobering and accomplished read meant to prick the conscience;
highly recommended."
- Library Journal
"Intriguing characters reveal the effects of war on both victim and
victimizer, and raise important questions about the emotional
implications of modern warfare."
- Publishers Weekly
"The toll that war exacts has seldom been demonstrated more vividly
in fiction than in this tale...With its spare prose and nuanced
plot that loops back and forth chronologically, Dau's first novel
is an absolutely compelling account of the damage done to all sides
by armed conflict. An essential addition to the literature of
war."
- Booklist
"Stephen Dau writes with remarkable precision, vitality and
honesty."
- Steven Galloway, author of The Cellist of Sarajevo
“This is first rate, original, powerful storytelling.”
- Jean Thompson, National Book Award finalist and author of
The Year We Left Home
“This is an utterly riveting debut.”
- Marisa Silver, author of The God of War
"The artfully crafted story zeroes in on those seconds when
decisions are made, sometimes with terrifying consequences."
- Kathleen Daley, The Star Ledger (New Jersey)
“Dau does a beautiful job of creating tales shrouded in mystery,
filled with pain and suffering … A modern, Citizen Kane like
morality play about war, death, ordinary people, hope and
forgiveness."
- Shelf Awareness
“[S]pare prose...enhances the remarkably meager body of
21st-century wartime literature and identifies Pittsburgh as a site
of divine intervention....the embodiment of truth and a symbol of
human frailty; a record of war, a labor of love, and a tangible
connection to lost ideals.”
- Sandra Levis, Pittsburgh Quarterly
“A humane and unforgettable portrayal of the lives behind those
casualty counts … Dau beautifully addresses a need to emotionally
engage with a war that has been going on for 10 years but that so
often feels remote and unreal … It is the first [novel of 2012] to
feel genuinely important.
- Wall Street Journal
“Everything's a shock to the system for Jonas, a teenager from an
unnamed Central Asian country, when he's granted asylum in the U.S.
His struggles to assimilate and come to terms with his life -- and
the American soldier who saved it -- make a story that could have
been spun from yesterday's headlines. But in Stephen Dau's
careful hands, it touches the deepest truths of loss and
healing.”
- Barnes & Noble
“Dau creates a disturbing portrayal of war as it destroys ideals
and innocence and makes victims of civilians and soldiers alike.
The novel is composed in a way that’s similar to how a painter
creates with watercolors: with delicate, barely substantive layers
that blend together to reveal depth, nuance, and meaning … Dau
demonstrates the tragic paradoxes of war in this brilliant and
deceptively simple novel that will provide ample discussion for
high school classes studying Middle East conflicts.”
- School Library Journal
“In moments, Dau’s riffs on the young man’s life recall the dense
beauty of Michael Ondaatje’s “The English Patient.’’ Like that
book, [The Book of Jonas] is a tale obsessed with the way war can
fracture memory and cauterize the place where love can begin....If
only our news had such radical belief in the power of empathy.”
- John Freeman, The Boston Globe
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