Spanning the period between the Chicago World's Fair of 1893 and the years just after World War I, Against the Daymoves from the labor troubles in Colorado to turn-of-the century New York, to London and Göttingen, Venice and Vienna, the Balkans, Central Asia, Siberia, Mexico, Paris, silent-era Hollywood, and one or two places not strictly speaking on the map at all. With a worldwide disaster looming just a few years ahead, it is a time of unrestrained corporate greed, false religiosity, moronic fecklessness, and evil intent in high places. The sizable cast of characters includes anarchists, balloonists, gamblers, corporate tycoons, drug enthusiasts, innocents and decadents, mathematicians, mad scientists, shamans, psychics and stage magicians, spies, detectives, adventuresses, and hired guns. There are cameo appearances by Nikola Tesla, Bela Lugosi, and Groucho Marx. As an era of certainty comes crashing down around their ears and an unpredictable future commences, these folks are mostly just trying to pursue their lives. Sometimes they manage to catch up; sometimes it's their lives that pursue them. Meanwhile, Thomas Pynchon is up to his usual business. Characters stop what they're doing to sing what are for the most part stupid songs. Strange sexual practices take place. Obscure languages are spoken, not always idiomatically. Contrary-to-fact occurrences occur. Maybe it's not the world, but with a minor adjustment or two, it's what the world might be.;PThomas Pynchonis the author of V., The Crying of Lot 49, Gravity's Rainbow, and, most recently, Mason & Dixon. He received the National Book Award for Gravity's Rainbowin 1974 and is rumored to have been a nominee for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Against the Daywas a New York Times Notable Book of 2006. Reader of over 200 audiobooks, Dick Hillhas won three coveted Audie awards and been nominated numerous times. He is also the recipient of several AudioFileEarphones Awards. AudioFileincludes Dick on their prestigious list of "Golden Voices." Excerpted from Against the Day by Thomas Pynchon All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
