After Dachau: A Novel - Hardcover

Quinn, Daniel

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 189395613X ISBN 13: 9781893956131

Publisher: Context Books, 2001

Synopsis

Mallory Hastings has been a "difficuit" patient from the moment she opened her eyes in a hospital in Oneonta, New York, following a minor automobile mishap. Terrified, hostile, and unaccountably mute (so that she must be retrained to use her own voice), she recognizes neither friends nor family and seems bent on rejecting every effort to help her back to her former condition of normalcy. Then a mysterious message reaches her from afar: First: You're not Mallory Hastings at all. Second: You don't know how you got where you are. Third: You're afraid to speak the truth to the people around you.
Though she's never heard of the man who sent it, she grabs this lifeline and allows herself to be pulled out of the hospital into a world that is as unfamiliar to her as the woman who claims to be her mother.
The man on the other end of the lifeline is Jason Tull, a man whose story is almost as strange as hers. The scion of a wealthy and powerful family, he could have had any kind of life he wanted. But when he left school, there was only one thing on his mind. Of all things, he had conceived a fascination for the phenomenon known as reincarnation.
After spending a decade investigating the many alleged instances of the phenomenon that occur annually worldwide, Jason has zeroed in on his true objective: to find and develop a "Golden Case" - a case that even hardened skeptics will be unable to dismiss. And he believes "Mallory Hastings" is that Golden Case.
The secret he must have from her is, of course, her true identity. If she's not Mallory Hastings, who is she?

About this title

About the Author:

Daniel Quinn is the author of Ishmael, The Story of B, My Ishmael, and Tales of Adam. He lives with his wife, Rennie, in Houston, Texas.

From Publishers Weekly:

From the author of the bestselling novel Ishmael, 1992 winner of the highly controversial $500,000 Turner Tomorrow Fellowship, comes this absorbing cautionary tale imagining a homogenous future society. In 1992 A.D., when the narrator, Jason Tull Jr., the dilettante scion of a famous, incredibly wealthy family, graduates from college, he decides to work for We Live Again, an underfunded foundation dedicated to tracking down and authenticating reported instances of reincarnation. After 10 years and hundreds of dead-end investigations, Jason encounters the case of Mallory Hastings, a 28-year-old librarian from Oneonta, N.Y., who, following a minor car wreck, regains consciousness as a deaf mute. Hoping he has finally stumbled onto the elusive "Golden Case," Jason gains Mallory's confidence. He is ill-prepared, however, to cope with the enormity of his discovery: the person now occupying Mallory's body is Gloria MacArthur, a Manhattan artist born in 1922 A.D. But this is only a hint of a dark, complex conundrum, for the "new" Mallory has scarcely learned to talk when she realizes that Jason's A.D. is not the Christian anno Domini. Quinn's provocative, Orwellian tale imagines that Adolf Hitler beat the Allies to the A-bomb in 1944 and set in place a chilling plan to achieve a world of Aryan perfection. In Mallory/Gloria's brave new world, 2002 years have passed "after Dachau," the chilling A.D. of the title. (Feb.) Forecast: Since the publication of Ishmael and its two companion volumes, My Ishmael and The Story of B, Quinn has gained a cult following. The added intrigue of a revisionist, Nazi-dominated history will likely rally fans, and Context's vigorous promotional plans, including a 20-city reading tour in March to support a 30,000-copy first printing, may extend Quinn's reach.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Context Books
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 189395613X
• ISBN 13: 9781893956131
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 230