Picture Palace
by Paul Theroux
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Fiction. Literature. HTML:"Never a dull moment . . . Vivid and deft." — New York Review of BooksMaude Pratt is a legend, a photographer famous for her cutting-edge techniques and uncanny ability to strip away the masks of the world's most recognizable celebrities and luminaries. Now in her seventies, Maude has been in the public eye since the 1920s, and her unparalleled portfolio includes intimate portraits of Gertrude Stein, Hemingway, and Picasso. While Maude possesses a singular show more capability to expose the inner lives of her subjects, she is obsessive about protecting her own, hiding her deepest secret in the "picture palace" of her memory. But when a young archivist comes to stay in Maude's Cape Cod home and begins sorting through her fifty years of work, Maude is forced to face her past and come to terms, at last, with the tragedies she's buried.
"A breathtaking tale . . . Intangibly, intricately brilliant." — Telegraph (UK.) show less
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Learn about photography and meet a brash woman in love with her brother. A novel of obsession, art, and incest. Maude reminds me a bit of Gloria Swanson's character Norma Desmond ("It's the pictures that got small.") in _Sunset Boulevard_.
One of Theroux's best novels.
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112+ Works 32,260 Members
Paul Edward Theroux was born on April 10, 1941 in Medford, Massachusetts and is an acclaimed travel writer. After attending the University of Massachusetts Amherst he joined the Peace Corps and taught in Malawi from 1963 to 1965. He also taught in Uganda at Makerere University and in Singapore at the University of Singapore. Although Theroux has show more also written travel books in general and about various modes of transport, his name is synonymous with the literature of train travel. Theroux's 1975 best-seller, The Great Railway Bazaar, takes the reader through Asia, while his second book about train travel, The Old Patagonian Express (1979), describes his trip from Boston to the tip of South America. His third contribution to the railway travel genre, Riding the Iron Rooster: By Train Through China, won the Thomas Cook Prize for best literary travel book in 1989. His literary output also includes novels, books for children, short stories, articles, and poetry. His novels include Picture Palace (1978), which won the Whitbread Award and The Mosquito Coast (1981), which won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. Theroux is a fellow of both the British Royal Society of Literature and the Royal Geographic Society. His title Lower River made The New York Times Best Seller List for 2012. Currently his 2015 book, Deep South , is a bestseller. (Bowker Author Biography) Paul Theroux is the distinguished author of numerous award-winning books, including "The Mosquito Coast," "Kowloon Tong," & "Half Moon Street." (Publisher Provided) show less
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Grote ABC (384)
Common Knowledge
- Canonical title*
- Orlando oder die Liebe zur Fotografie
- Original title
- Picture Palace
- Original publication date
- 1978
*Some information comes from Common Knowledge in other languages. Click "Edit" for more information.
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- Members
- 293
- Popularity
- 109,334
- Reviews
- 2
- Rating
- (2.88)
- Languages
- Dutch, English, French, German
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 15
- ASINs
- 5



























































