The Flame Alphabet
In The Flame Alphabet, the most maniacally gifted writer of our generation delivers a novel about how far we will go in order to protect our loved ones.
The sound of children's speech has become lethal. In the park, adults wither beneath the powerful screams of their offspring. For young parents Sam and Claire, it seems their only means of survival is to flee from their daughter, Esther. But they find it isn't so easy to leave someone you love, even as they waste away from her malevolent speech. On the eve of their departure, Claire mysteriously disappears, and Sam, determined to find a cure for this new toxic language, presses on alone into a foreign world to try to save…
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November 13, 2012BEN MARCUS is the author of four books of fiction-- The Age of Wire and String, Notable American Women, The Flame Alphabet, and Leaving the Sea--and is the editor of two short story anthologies: The Anchor Book of New American Short Stories, and New American Stories. His fiction, essays, and reviews have appeared in Granta, Harper's, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, McSweeney's, The Believer, The New York Times, and Tablet. Among his awards are a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Berlin Prize, a Whiting Writers Award, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in fiction, and three Pushcart Prizes. He lives with his family in New York City, where he is on the faculty at Columbia University.