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From one of our most critically acclaimed
authors comes a masterly story of terrorism and revenge and
one man’s attempts to extricate himself from his past.
Thomas Railles, an American expatriate
and former “odd-jobber” for
the CIA, is a respected painter living with his beloved wife,
Florette, in the south of France. On an ordinary autumn day,
Florette goes for a walk in the hills and is killed by unknown
assailants. Her death devastates Thomas, and in the weeks
and months that follow he struggles to make sense of a world
that seems defined by violence and pain.
Each night Thomas tracks the war in Iraq
on the evening news while Florette’s killers remain at large.
When French
officials detain four Moroccan terrorists and charge them
with Florette’s murder, Thomas is invited to witness the
interrogation. The experience completely undoes him, changing
his world utterly, and he finds himself unable to remain
at a distance from America, the country he left so long ago.
Ward Just’s most gripping and insightful
novel yet, Forgetfulness is a
haunting depiction of the corrosive effects of today’s
war on terror and its unexpected consequences for the individual
conscience.
Ward Just is the author
of fourteen previous novels, including the National book
Award finalist Echo
House and An Unfinished Season,
winner of the Chicago Tribune’s Heartland Award. In a career
that began as a war correspondent
for Newsweek and the Washington Post, Just
has lived and written in half a dozen countries, including
Britain, France,
and Vietnam. His characters often lead public lives as politicians,
civil servants, soldiers, artists, and writers. It is the
tension between public duty and private conscience that animates
much of his fiction, including Forgetfulness. Just
and his wife, Sarah Catchpole, divide their time between
Martha’s
Vineyard and Paris.
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