Resonant and provocative>

Autorentext

Sigrid Nunez is the New York Times bestselling author of The Friend, winner of the 2018 National Book Award, and of seven other novels, including Salvation City, The Last of Her Kind, and What Are You Going Through. She is also the author of Sempre Susan: A Memoir of Susan Sontag. Her books have been translated into over thirty languages.

Klappentext

I did not remember a Rouenna Zycinski. I was sure I had never known her. But many years ago, according to her letter, we had been neighbors in the same public housing project, on Staten Island.

A writer receives a letter from an old acquaintance, recalling their shared childhood and asking if they can meet. Though fascinated by the stories Rouenna tells about her life as a combat nurse in Vietnam, the narrator flatly declines her request that they collaborate on a memoir. It is only later, in the aftermath of Rouenna's shocking death, that the narrator is drawn to write about her friend - and her friend's war. Writing Rouenna's story becomes all-consuming: at once a necessity and the only consolation.

'For Rouenna is about everything: war and remembrance, how we invent our "selves" and why; why we kill ourselves - or live. I was dazzled by this book' Washington Post

'Beautifully written . . . mesmerizing . . . enthralling' O, The Oprah Magazine

'An entirely different kind of war novel . . . What emerges is something that feels like truth' San Francisco Chronicle