Mortal Leap
Published on 29. March 2024
Book
Paperback/Softback
368 pages
978-1-915812-10-0 (ISBN)
Description
A merchant seaman is the sole survivor when his ship is sunk in a battle in the South Pacific. Badly burned, he is stripped of every shred of identity and cast into the sea, naked, faceless, nameless. Rescued and lying in a Pearl Harbor hospital, he is mistakenly identified as the missing Lt. Ben Davenant by Davenant's wife. In a moment, the man decides to go along, to take on Davenant's identity, to return with her to California and take on his life.
Mortal Leap may remind some readers of the story of Don Draper in the TV series Mad Men. What does it mean to abandon one life completely and step into another in midstream? To step into a marriage, a house, a way of life, all of which are utterly new and unfamiliar? And what do you do when someone from your old life shows up?
Decades before Mad Men, MacDonald Harris created a story that we all know but have never heard before. Out of print for decades, Mortal Leap has become a rare and coveted cult classic, the few remaining copies passed along from reader to reader. Now, Boiler House Press's Recovered Books series makes this remarkable book available again.
Mortal Leap may remind some readers of the story of Don Draper in the TV series Mad Men. What does it mean to abandon one life completely and step into another in midstream? To step into a marriage, a house, a way of life, all of which are utterly new and unfamiliar? And what do you do when someone from your old life shows up?
Decades before Mad Men, MacDonald Harris created a story that we all know but have never heard before. Out of print for decades, Mortal Leap has become a rare and coveted cult classic, the few remaining copies passed along from reader to reader. Now, Boiler House Press's Recovered Books series makes this remarkable book available again.
Reviews / Votes
"Written with a terse fierceness, a pitiless kind of book that forces one to read in the intense spirit in which it is written." -- Books and Bookmen"Up there with the best of Conrad." -- R. V. Cassill
"Mortal Leap is a book so far beyond 'good' that its greatness can only be experienced." -- Wesley Minter, Third Place Books "Far more than a neglected curiosity, Mortal Leap is an impressively original, adventurous novel of ideas and, as Coe says in his introduction, 'a masterpiece of existential writing'." - David Collard, Times Literary Supplement
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Norwich
United Kingdom
Dimensions
Height: 198 mm
Width: 129 mm
Thickness: 20 mm
Weight
391 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-915812-10-0 (9781915812100)
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
Persons
MacDonald Harris was the pseudonym of Donald Heiney. As Harris, he wrote 17 novels and a nonfiction book on sailing, including The Balloonist, which was nominated for the National Book Award in 1977. He taught for many years at the University of California Irvine and published scholarly books on comparative literature. In 1982 he received the Award in Literature of the American Academy and Institute for Arts and Sciences. He died in 1993.
Jonathan Coe's novels include What a Carve Up!, The Rotter's Club, Expo 58, Number 11, and Bournville. His biography of B. S. Johnson, Like a Fiery Elephant, won the Samuel Johnson Prize as the best nonfiction book of 2004.
Steven G. Kellman is a professor of comparative literature at the University of Texas at San Antonio. His books include The Self-Begetting Novel, The Translingual Imagination, Redemption: The Life of Henry Roth, and Rambling Prose: Essays.
Jonathan Coe's novels include What a Carve Up!, The Rotter's Club, Expo 58, Number 11, and Bournville. His biography of B. S. Johnson, Like a Fiery Elephant, won the Samuel Johnson Prize as the best nonfiction book of 2004.
Steven G. Kellman is a professor of comparative literature at the University of Texas at San Antonio. His books include The Self-Begetting Novel, The Translingual Imagination, Redemption: The Life of Henry Roth, and Rambling Prose: Essays.