The Snake Pit by Mary Jane Ward

The Snake Pit by Mary Jane Ward

Praised on both sides of the Atlantic as well as in the author's native Uganda, Moses Isegawa's first novel Abyssinian Chronicles was a big, transcendently ambitious book (Boston Globe) that blasts open the tidy borders of the conventional novel and redraws the literary map to reveal a whole new world (Elle).

In Snakepit, Isegawa returns to the surreal, brutalizing landscapes of his homeland during the time of dictator Idi Amin, when interlocking webs of emotional cruelty kept tyrants gratified and servants cooperative, a land where no one-not husbands or wives, parents or lovers-is ever safe from the implacable desires of men in power. Men like General Bazooka, who rues the day he hired Cambridge-educated Bat Katanga as his Bureaucrat Two-a man too good at his job-and places in his midst (and his bed) a seductive operative named Victoria, whose mission and motives are anything but simple. Ambitious and acquisitive, more than a little arrogant, Katanga finds himself steadily boxed in by events spiraling madly out of control, where deception, extortion, and murder are just so many cards to be played.

Mary Jane Ward (1905-1981) was the author of nine novels, including her three autobiographical novels that concern mental illness and its treatment--The Snake Pit (1946), Counterclockwise (1969), and The Other Caroline (1970). Her papers are held at Boston University's Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center.

Larry Lockridge is Professor Emeritus of English at New York University, and has held Danforth, Woodrow Wilson, and Guggenheim fellowships. He is the author of several books, including a biography of his father, Shade of the Raintree: The Life and Death of Ross Lockridge, Jr., Author of Raintree County.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781598536805
ISBN 10	159853680X
Title	The Snake Pit
Author	Mary Jane Ward
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	The Library of America
Year published	2021-06-01
Number of pages	368
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.