The Elusive Embrace

Name: The Elusive Embrace
Price: 46.95 AUD
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ISBN: 9780375706974

Desire and the Riddle of Identity

Daniel Mendelsohn

$46.95

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English

Vintage U S
20 June 2000

Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945); Philosophy

Hailed for its searing emotional insights, and for the astonishing originality with which it weaves together personal history, cultural essay, and readings of classical texts by Sophocles, Ovid, Euripides, and Sappho, The Elusive Embrace is a profound exploration of the mysteries of identity. It is also a meditation in which the author uses his own divided life to investigate the ""rich conflictedness of things,"" the double lives all of us lead.

Daniel Mendelsohn recalls the deceptively quiet suburb where he grew up, torn between his mathematician father's pursuit of scientific truth and the exquisite lies spun by his Orthodox Jewish grandfather; the streets of manhattan's newest ""gay ghetto,"" where ""desire for love"" competes with ""love of desire;"" and the quiet moonlit house where a close friend's small son teaches him the meaning of fatherhood. And, finally, in a neglected Jewish cemetery, the author uncovers a family secret that reveals the universal need for storytelling, for inventing myths of the self. The book that Hilton Als calls ""equal to Whitman's 'Song of Myself,'"" The Elusive Embrace marks a dazzling literary debut.

By: Daniel Mendelsohn
Imprint: Vintage U S
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 202mm, Width: 131mm, Spine: 15mm
Weight: 234g
ISBN: 9780375706974
ISBN 10: 0375706976
Pages: 224
Publication Date: 20 June 2000
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Reviews for The Elusive Embrace: Desire and the Riddle of Identity

""A one-of-a-kind book-wise, startling, and wonderfully unclassifiable."" -Newsweek ""A literary achievement of the first rank.... The Greeks knew how to give a universal significance to individual experience. So does Daniel Mendelsohn."" -The New York Observer