Praise for Jerzy: A Novel
New York Times “Editors’ Choice” selection
Evening Standard “Best Summer Beach Reads” selection
“A moving attempt to trace the connections between Kosinski’s wartime struggles and postwar fictions.” —New Yorker
“Jerzy is a novel with a light touch that’s still capable of lifting heavy subjects. Charyn knows what he wants to do and knows how to do it. His prose has some of the rapid-fire but carefully controlled energy of Thomas Pynchon’s early novella The Crying of Lot 49.” —New York Times Book Review
“Intriguing. . . . Lively. . . . Perhaps Kosinski lied and dissembled more than was strictly necessary, but as Charyn’s puzzle-box novel demonstrates, it’s hard to argue with the results.” —Toronto Star
“Brilliantly fascinating, weirdly original.” —Evening Standard
“Daringly imaginative and profoundly insightful.” —Booklist (starred review)
“The rise and fall of novelist Jerzy Kosinski (1933-1991) emerges in an offbeat way . . . through Charyn’s resourceful imagination and always-colorful, punchy, provocative prose.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“Peels back the layers of myth and artifice built up by chameleon-like Polish-American novelist Jerzy Kosinski. . . . Through triangulating voices and stories, Charyn manages to get close to the truth, and does so with beautiful, spare prose.” —Publishers Weekly
“A fast-paced, minimalist exploration of one of 20th century’s most elusive literary figures.” —Shelf Awareness
“Gripping. . . . Charyn will expertly guide you through the shadowy life of this most enigmatic of artists in this imaginative and provocative novel.” —Historical Novels Review
Select Praise for Jerome Charyn
“Jerome Charyn, like Nabokov, is that most fiendish sort of writer—so seductive as to beg imitation, so singular as to make imitation impossible.” —Tom Bissell
“Charyn is one of the most important writers in American literature.” —Michael Chabon
“Charyn is a one off: no other living American writer crafts novels with his vibrancy of historical imagination.” —William Giraldi
“[Charyn’s] sentences are pure vernacular music, his voice unmistakable.” —Jonathan Lethem
“One of our most rewarding novelists.” —Larry McMurtry
“No one writes historical fiction better than Jerome Charyn.” —Brenda Wineapple
“Charyn has trained his prose and makes it perform tricks. It’s a New York prose, street smart, sly and full of lurches, like a series of subway stops on the way to hell.” —John Leonard, New York Times
“Among Charyn’s writerly gifts is a dazzling energy―a highly inflected rapid-fire prose that pulls us along like a pony cart over rough terrain.” —Joyce Carol Oates, New York Review of Books
“Charyn skillfully breathes life into historical icons.” —New Yorker
“One of our most intriguing fiction writers.” —O, The Oprah Magazine
“Charyn’s blunt, brilliantly crafted prose bubbles with the pleasure of nailing life to the page in just the right words.” —Washington Post
“[Charyn’s] storytelling is off-the-chart wonderful.” —Jerusalem Post
“Absolutely unique among American writers.” —Los Angeles Times
“A contemporary American Balzac.” —Newsday
“[Charyn] writes with the sort of whirlwind energy that turns the seediest story into a breakneck adventure.” —Wall Street Journal
“Charyn has a gift for the unexpected, both linguistically and narratively. . . . The result is at once surprising and very entertaining.” —BookPage
“For half a century, [Charyn] has been an unpredictable, unclassifiable, and above all exactingly smart author.” —Open Letters Review
“Charyn is an institution. . . . His skill is such that it’s difficult to separate the real-world figures and entities from the characters and places the author is inventing.” —Washington Independent Review of Books
“Charyn, as he has proven time and time again, is a master of the written word.” —Jewish Journal
“Charyn makes artful use of historical fact and fiction’s panache.” —Kirkus Reviews
“Wherever he takes us, Charyn’s mind is always agile, and his prose is stunningly electric.” —Jewish Book Council