Why did I love this book?
Iāve always liked fat paperbacks, and this is maybe the best fat book ever. I picked up a copy randomly at a used bookstore, when I was a teenager, and Dhalgren ended up changing the direction of my life. Even then I had wanted to write a book but had no real idea what a novel could do, and how good they could be. Dhalgren changed that. Itās evocative and haunting, like a dream. The ultimate unreliable narrator enters and is lost in a shifting, urban setting. Familiar characters, dialogue that rings true, and an off-kilter, detailed, yet almost plotless story (like life!), all of it written in an exquisite style that only Delany could pull off. Poetry: a high point to set any writerās bar.
4 authors picked Dhalgren as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
Nebula Award Finalist: Reality unravels in a Midwestern town in this sci-fi epic by the acclaimed author of Babel-17. Includes a foreword by William Gibson.
A young halfāNative American known as the Kid has hitchhiked from Mexico to the midwestern city Bellonaāonly something is wrong there . . . In Bellona, the shattered city, a nameless cataclysm has left reality unhinged. Into this desperate metropolis steps the Kid, his fist wrapped in razor-sharp knives, to write, to love, to wound.
So begins Dhalgren, Samuel R. Delanyās masterwork, which in 1975 opened a new door for what science fiction could mean.ā¦