Warlock
Will be published approx. on 24. September 2026
Book
Paperback/Softback
656 pages
978-0-241-82307-1 (ISBN)
Description
The taste and smell of Warlock was not merely that of its dust, but the taste of apprehension, the smell of fear and anger like a dangerous animal snarling and stinking in its cage . . .
In the dust-soaked, lawless town of Warlock, chaos reigns. After a band of local cowboys led by the cut-throat Abe McQuown chases the deputy sheriff out of town, the local citizens decide to take action. Enter famed Texan gunslinger Clay Blaisedell, hired to restore the peace and see off the outlaws, from San Pablo in the valley to the distant peaks of the Dinosaur Mountains. But in the heat-haze of the town, allegiances shift and justice blurs with vengeance. As a strike in the local silver mines reaches fever pitch, each man and woman must face the horrors of the past, and confront an uncertain future.
Inspired by true events surrounding the infamous gunfight at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, Arizona, Warlock blazed a trail for the modern Western. A finalist for the 1958 Pulitzer Prize, it offers a scathing deconstruction of the myth of America and the duel between order and anarchy.
In the dust-soaked, lawless town of Warlock, chaos reigns. After a band of local cowboys led by the cut-throat Abe McQuown chases the deputy sheriff out of town, the local citizens decide to take action. Enter famed Texan gunslinger Clay Blaisedell, hired to restore the peace and see off the outlaws, from San Pablo in the valley to the distant peaks of the Dinosaur Mountains. But in the heat-haze of the town, allegiances shift and justice blurs with vengeance. As a strike in the local silver mines reaches fever pitch, each man and woman must face the horrors of the past, and confront an uncertain future.
Inspired by true events surrounding the infamous gunfight at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, Arizona, Warlock blazed a trail for the modern Western. A finalist for the 1958 Pulitzer Prize, it offers a scathing deconstruction of the myth of America and the duel between order and anarchy.
Reviews / Votes
One of our best American novels -- Thomas Pynchon [Warlock] blazed a trail for much of the best modern fiction of the American west * Guardian * [A] brilliant novel of the violent West * San Francisco Chronicle * Warlock is a story of the birth pangs of law and order, and the final arbitration of the six-shooter . . . hard to give a higher tribute to a book on the early West * New York Herald Tribune * A vast mural of a novel * Los Angeles Times * Like Henry James and Mark Twain, Oakley Hall is a master craftsman of the story. [His] dialogue is perfectly pitched, and intrigue will keep you turning the pages -- Amy TanMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Penguin Books Ltd
Product notice
Paperback (UK-B)
Dimensions
Height: 198 mm
Width: 129 mm
Thickness: 35 mm
Weight
500 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-241-82307-1 (9780241823071)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Person
Oakley Hall was born in 1920 in San Diego and grew up there and in Honolulu. After graduating from the University of California, Berkeley, Hall joined the Marine Corps and was stationed in the Pacific during the Second World War. Following the war, he continued his studies in France, Switzerland and England, returning to the US to receive an MFA in creative writing from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Hall published his first book, Murder City, in 1949, and went on to write more than twenty works of fiction and non-fiction. Best known for his novels set in the Old West, he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 1958 with his revelatory novel Warlock. Hall was director of the writing programme at the University of California, Irvine, for twenty years and among his many honours are lifetime achievement awards from the PEN Center USA and the Cowboy Hall of Fame. He passed away in 2008.