Zusatztext Poignant and provocative. . . .Wallace's lush verbal invention [is] his real genius. Los Angeles Times Powerful. . . . A magical and thoroughly absorbing story about the dangers and deceptions of appearances. Minneapolis-St. Paul Star-Tribune Wallace writes with a heartbreaking kind of razzle-dazzle. USA Today What a pleasure it is to be able to read a book and be able to say! without qualification! this is terrific. . . .This novel is Daniel Wallace's best. National Public Radio Informationen zum Autor Daniel Wallace is the author of three novels, Big Fish (1998), Ray in Reverse (2000) and The Watermelon King (2003). His stories have been published far and wide in many magazines and anthologies, including The Yale Review , The Massachusetts Review , Shenandoah and Glimmer Train , and his illustrated work has appeared in the L.A. Times and Italian Vanity Fair . Big Fish has been translated into 18 languages and was adapted for film by Tim Burton and John August, and is now available on DVD loaded with extras - including an interview with the author. He lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina with his wife and son and teaches at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Klappentext Henry Walker was once a world-class magician, performing to sold-out shows in New York. But now he has been reduced to joining Musgrove's Chinese Circus (which at no point in its tour of the deep South has ever included a single Chinese person) as the shambling Negro Magician, whose dark black skin and electric green eyes bewitch most audiences. But one balmy Mississippi night in 1954, Henry disappears in the company of three rowdy white teens and is never seen again. Wallace pieces together Henry's incredible vagabond life - from a deal with a bone-white devil known only as Mr. Sebastian, to the heartrending loss of his sister Hannah - and creates an enchanting tale of love, loss, identity, and the limitation of magic.Chapter 1 A Long Story May 20th, 1954 Jeremiah Mosgrove-the proprietor of Jeremiah Mosgrove's Chinese Circus-hired Henry Walker four years ago, at the halfway point of the twentieth century, hired him almost as soon as he'd walked into Jeremiah's office: he needed a magician. He hadn't had a magician in the show for going on a year, not since Rupert Cavendish. Sir Rupert Cavendish was his full name, and he'd been a skilled prestidigitator- that is, until he lost most of his digits in a thresher. For a while they kept him on as a guesser of weight and age. But he always went high on both counts, and soon people began to avoid him. Last Jeremiah heard, he'd found work at a poultry farm, gutting chickens. Since then, nothing. And what is a circus without magic? You could hardly call it a circus at all. Before he became proprietor, Jeremiah-a huge man, with hair covering most of his body-was the Human Bear: the tips of his fingers and the glow in his cheeks were the only evidence he had skin at all. But he'd always had dreams, and when the owner of the circus died (surprisingly, in this world of freaks and freak occurrences, of natural causes), Jeremiah used his intimidating size and verbal skills to ascend the throne, where he'd been ever since. Nothing changed during his tenure but the name: though there had never been a Chinese person associated with the circus, Jeremiah liked the sound of it. So Chinese Circus it was. The day Henry came, Jeremiah's office was a slat of plywood balanced on two wooden horses, one chair, without walls or ceiling, carpeted in straw and horseshit, at the edge of the field where he'd chosen to set up the show. Henry had appeared from nowhere. Later, some would say they'd seen him wandering a long road alone, or crawling from a gully, or something like that, a story of a mysterious appearance to bookend the mysterio...

Autorentext

Daniel Wallace is the author of three novels, Big Fish (1998), Ray in Reverse (2000) and The Watermelon King (2003). His stories have been published far and wide in many magazines and anthologies, including The Yale Review, The Massachusetts Review, Shenandoah and Glimmer Train, and his illustrated work has appeared in the L.A. Times and Italian Vanity Fair. Big Fish has been translated into 18 languages and was adapted for film by Tim Burton and John August, and is now available on DVD loaded with extras - including an interview with the author. He lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina with his wife and son and teaches at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Klappentext

Henry Walker was once a world-class magician, performing to sold-out shows in New York. But now he has been reduced to joining Musgrove's Chinese Circus (which at no point in its tour of the deep South has ever included a single Chinese person) as the shambling Negro Magician, whose dark black skin and electric green eyes bewitch most audiences. But one balmy Mississippi night in 1954, Henry disappears in the company of three rowdy white teens and is never seen again. Wallace pieces together Henry's incredible vagabond life - from a deal with a bone-white devil known only as Mr. Sebastian, to the heartrending loss of his sister Hannah - and creates an enchanting tale of love, loss, identity, and the limitation of magic.

Leseprobe
Chapter 1

A Long Story

May 20th, 1954

Jeremiah Mosgrove-the proprietor of Jeremiah Mosgrove's Chinese Circus-hired Henry Walker four years ago, at the halfway point of the twentieth century, hired him almost as soon as he'd walked into Jeremiah's office: he needed a magician. He hadn't had a magician in the show for going on a year, not since Rupert Cavendish. Sir Rupert Cavendish was his full name, and he'd been a skilled prestidigitator- that is, until he lost most of his digits in a thresher. For a while they kept him on as a guesser of weight and age. But he always went high on both counts, and soon people began to avoid him. Last Jeremiah heard, he'd found work at a poultry farm, gutting chickens. Since then, nothing. And what is a circus without magic? You could hardly call it a circus at all.

Before he became proprietor, Jeremiah-a huge man, with hair covering most of his body-was the Human Bear: the tips of his fingers and the glow in his cheeks were the only evidence he had skin at all. But he'd always had dreams, and when the owner of the circus died (surprisingly, in this world of freaks and freak occurrences, of natural causes), Jeremiah used his intimidating size and verbal skills to ascend the throne, where he'd been ever since. Nothing changed during his tenure but the name: though there had never been a Chinese person associated with the circus, Jeremiah liked the sound of it. So Chinese Circus it was.

The day Henry came, Jeremiah's office was a slat of plywood balanced on two wooden horses, one chair, without walls or ceiling, carpeted in straw and horseshit, at the edge of the field where he'd chosen to set up the show. Henry had appeared from nowhere. Later, some would say they'd seen him wandering a long road alone, or crawling from a gully, or something like that, a story of a mysterious appearance to bookend the mysterious disappearance that, four years later, would follow.

"Show me what you can do," Jeremiah said to him, all business. But Henry-weak, thin, shaky-could do almost nothing. The pack of old cards he removed from his pocket fell like confetti from his nervous hands. Finally, he was able to force a card, produce a flower, change water into wine. But the truth was he had little more than his magnificent presence: he was tall, gaunt, doomed-and black. A black man with green eyes-a Negro-and this, in the end, is why Jeremiah hired him. A marketing tool of these dimensions was not something he could let pass by. For a magician was nothing, really, the same way a cow was nothing. But a Negro magician-or, say, a two-headed cow-now, that was something. Better even tha…