“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 review)
Also available in hardcover from Blue Rider Press
a member of The Penguin Group (USA).
“This is first rate, original, powerful storytelling.”
—Jean Thompson
National Book Award finalist and
Author of The Year We Left Home
“Stephen Dau writes with remarkable precision, vitality and honesty."
—Steven Galloway
Author of The Cellist of Sarajevo
“This is an utterly riveting debut.”
—Marisa Silver
Author of The God of War
“The toll that war exacts has seldom been demonstrated more vividly in fiction than in this tale...An essential addition to the literature of war.”
—BOOKLIST
(starred review)
"The year's finest novel addressing America's 21st-century wars."
--the wall street journal
“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.”
--the BOSTON GLOBE
“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
