- Extraordinary Renditions
- Andrew Ervin
Coffee House Press
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- Philadelphia, PA
Publisher’s Weekly – Best Books of 2010
One of the Best Books of 2010 by NPR’s WOSU Public Media
One of The Millions’ 13 Most Underrated Books of 2010
“One of the year’s most memorable books of fiction.”
— The Huffington Post —
“The variety of viewpoints and the author’s evident intimacy with an ancient foreign capital [Budapest] are promising, and Ervin makes it plain that he is taking on weighty themes.”
— The New York Times —
“Darkly evocative . . . the book has a prismlike quality; each story makes us see the city from a different but overlapping perspective.”
— Philadelphia Inquirer —
“There is a lyrical muscularity in Ervin’s writing that, at times, leaves the reader breathless. Extraordinary Renditions is tightly plotted and brilliantly composed. A very good book and, one hopes, a taste of things to come.”
— January Magazine —
“Andrew Ervin works literary magic in his novel Extraordinary Renditions. Vividly exploring Budapest’s past and present in three linked novellas, Ervin’s true mastery of the language becomes apparent as the stories converge.”
— David Gutowski, Largehearted Boy —
“Ervin keeps his emotionally and politically fraught setting animated, thanks largely to his skill at inhabiting each of his characters. . . . [Extraordinary Rendition’s] ending makes a poignant case for the power of art in an age of war.”
— Minneapolis Star Tribune —
“Andrew Ervin skillfully converges three lives in three stories that make up his new book. He intertwines beautiful, minor details that bring separations into an exquisite whole. His impressive debut is so masterfully composed, it moves the reader not with intrigue or romance, rather with gorgeous simplicity.”
— Kassie Rose, WOSU Public Media, NPR Member Station —
“Set in a madly grasping modern Budapest, literary critic Ervin’s debut mines very different ways of achieving personal and artistic freedom in three neatly polished, interlocking tales. . . . With dexterous sensibility and fluid prose, Ervin’s protagonists find liberation from the onerous strictures of Budapest’s Nazi and Communist past.”
— Publishers Weekly (starred review) —
“A thought-provoking exploration of tyranny, freedom, and the power of music.”
— Booklist —
“It’s funny, alarming, evocative, and, very often with its internal description, defies its apparent historical setting. It echoes political texts while presenting political folly (and youthful folly). Said folly even extends to the naivete of a celebrated composer of some years, who shuffles the Budapest streets like a young man.”
— Ed Champion, The Millions —
“Andrew Ervin’s Extraordinary Renditions, a slyly structured first novel set in Budapest, shows a febrile intelligence and considerable ambition. . . . Music not only structures Extraordinary Renditions, it is also the source of its resolution. Just as in music, it is the cumulative effect of the notes and “the space between the notes” that gives this novel its power.”
— The Collagist —
“Andrew Ervin writes with an empathetic passion, near poetic words, daring politics, and a sensitive and mature grasp of his characters. This is a strong debut.”
— Chris Abani —
“I can’t decide what amazes me most about this book: the confident, muscular beauty of Andrew Ervin’s writing; the breadth of his imagination; or the depth and diversity of his profoundly engaging characters. Again and again, though the force of the narrative drove me relentlessly onward, I would stop simply to marvel. Extraordinary Renditions is an extraordinary debut.”
— Julia Glass —
“This tautly plotted, richly detailed trio of linked stories documents, with devastating and blackly comic ardor, the impossibility of simple morality in the rapidly aging era of terror. With Philadelphia and Budapest as his unlikely anchors, Andrew Ervin gives us crooked military men, postmodern artists, marauding skinheads and concert musicians, all rendered in nimble prose that never fails to shock and delight. An awesome debut.”
— J. Robert Lennon —
“Through the eyes of three outsiders, Extraordinary Renditions takes the reader deep into the heart of Budapest, both its past and present. The whole city is here, the banks of the Danube brimming with history, intrigue, art, food, drink, and most important of all, music. His characters may be lost—even the one native is a foreigner—but Andrew Ervin is a sharp-eyed, sure-handed guide.”
— Stewart O’Nan —
“There is a striking moral clarity—a certainty even to the questions the work poses—evidenced as these narratives ponder the long-form’s grand themes. Being. Music. War. Love. Extraordinary Renditions’ clear tenor hearkens the ancient masters of the novel in the most sublime way, even as it points toward that which is post-mastery.”
— Bayo Ojikutu —
