7.6 /10 1 Votes
Language English Media type Print Paperback ISBN 978-1-56689-274-2 Originally published 2011 Publisher Coffee House Press Country United States of America | 3.8/5 Goodreads Publication date 2011 Pages 181 pp Dewey Decimal 813/.6—DC23 Genre Novel | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Leaving the atocha station by ben lerner
Leaving the Atocha Station (2011) is the debut novel by American poet and critic Ben Lerner. It won the 2011 Believer Book Award.
Contents
Story
The first-person narrator of the novel, Adam Gordon, is an American poet in his early 20s participating in a prestigious fellowship in Madrid circa 2004. The stated goal of his fellowship is to write a long narrative poem highlighting literature's role in the Spanish Civil War. Gordon, however, spends his time reading Tolstoy, smoking spliffs, and observing himself observing his surroundings.
Leaving the Atocha Station can be read as a Künstlerroman. However, Lerner has said:
The protagonist doesn't unequivocally undergo a dramatic transformation, for instance, but rather the question of "transformation" is left open, and people seem to have strong and distinct senses about whether the narrator has grown or remained the same, whether this is a sort of coming of age story or whether it charts a year in the life of a sociopath.
Critical reception
The New Statesman named it one of the best books of 2011. The New Yorker included it in its Reviewers' Favorites from 2011. Jonathan Franzen considered it one of his favorite books of the year. It won the 2011 Believer Book Award.