Waiting for the End of the World
by Madison Smartt Bell
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A photographer descends into New York City's chaotic and brutal underground in this sweeping story of the Big Apple at its seediestIt's 1982, and Clarence Dmitri Larkin is working as a photographer at Bellevue hospital in Manhattan. The job offers a painfully clear perspective on a city sick with madness, fraught with crime, and coming apart at the seams. Larkin's curiosity soon leads to a subterranean world of all the city's secret dangers, including domestic terrorists with a nuclear show more device, a serial killer inspired by an occult past, and a disfigured arsonist who just might be the one to burn the whole city down.Waiting for the End of the World is a gritty portrait of 1980s New York, and an engrossing look at the battle of good versus evil in a city racked with violence and paranoia. show lessTags
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Larkin is an alcoholic and minor epileptic. When he is sober enough to work, he delivers flowers and photographs patients at New York’s Bellevue hospital. When he isn’t working, he scours the papers for mention of spontaneous human combustion, rescues a child who has been abused by Satanists, drinks and philosophizes with Russian mystics and derelict musicians, and courts visions of demons and the apocalypse.
In a dizzy and gritty portrayal of New York, Bell has written an apocalyptic modern fairy tale of nuclear proportions.
In a dizzy and gritty portrayal of New York, Bell has written an apocalyptic modern fairy tale of nuclear proportions.
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Madison Smartt Bell was born and raised in Tennessee; he studied at Princeton University and Hollins College. He has taught in a variety of capacities, including the Iowa Writers' Workshop, the Johns Hopkins University Writing Seminars, the University of Southern Maine, Goucher College, and as a Fellow at the MacDowell Colony. Much of his writing, show more which reflects a concern with race relations, has been critically acclaimed. Bell was awarded the 1989 Lillian Smith Award for Soldier's Joy. His 1996 historical novel All Soul's Rising was nominated for both the National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award. All Soul's Rising, which depicts the slave uprising in Haiti in the late eighteenth century, also led to his selection to the Granta's list of Best Young American Novelists. His books include The Washington Square Ensemble (1983), Waiting for the End of the World (1985), Straight Cut (1986), The Year of Silence (1987), Zero dB (1987), Soldier's Joy (1989), Barking Man (1990), Doctor Sleep (1991), Save Me, Joe Lewis (1993), and All Soul's Rising (1996). His short stories have been frequently anthologized, including selection for the annual Best American Short Stories for 1984, 1987, 1989, and 1990. Bell teaches at Goucher College in Baltimore, Maryland. (Bowker Author Biography) Madison Smartt Bell is the author of eleven previous works of fiction, including All Souls' Rising, which was a National Book Award finalist; Save Me, Joe Louis; Dr. Sleep; Soldier's Joy; and Ten Indians. He lives in Baltimore, Maryland. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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- Members
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- Reviews
- 1
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- (4.03)
- Languages
- English, German
- Media
- Paper, Audiobook, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 7
- ASINs
- 2
