Critics' Opinion:
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Published Oct 2017
240 pages
Genre: Historical Fiction
Publication Information
A brilliant and fresh take on the old-school western.
A young Swedish immigrant finds himself penniless and alone in California. The boy travels East in search of his brother, moving on foot against the great current of emigrants pushing West. Driven back again and again, he meets naturalists, criminals, religious fanatics, swindlers, Indians, and lawmen, and his exploits turn him into a legend. Diaz defies the conventions of historical fiction and genre, offering a probing look at the stereotypes that populate our past and a portrait of radical foreignness.
"Boxed and Starred Review. The book contains some of the finest landscape writing around, so potent because it reflects Håkan's solitude: 'Nothing interrupted the mineral silence of the desert. In its complete stillness, the world seemed solid, as if made of one single dry block'." - Publishers Weekly
"Starred Review. Resonant historical fiction with a contemporary feel." - Library Journal
"Not for the faint of heart, perhaps, but an ambitious and thoroughly realized work of revisionist historical fiction." - Kirkus
"Diaz's novel is a creature all its own, and it's one of the very few works of fiction that transport you, emotionally and imaginatively, to an utterly new place. It's a breathtaking trip." - Paul La Farge
"If I could hand you this book I would. Read this...this is fiction at its finest - propulsive, unsettling, wildly ambitious, and an unforgettable journey that we will certainly return to in the years to come." - Paul Yoon, author of The Mountain
"In the Distance by Hernan Diaz sends a shotgun blast through standard received notions of the Old West and who was causing trouble in it. Håkan and his adventures, which are truly extraordinary, not to mention beautifully written, had me from the novel's first striking chapter to the last." - Laird Hunt
"On its surface, In the Distance is a haunting and unique tale of survival - with all the thrilling frustrations of such. Deeper still, it is a story about the devastation wrought by the American Dream - the West as it happened to many, in spite of all they'd hoped." - Colin Winnette
"[Diaz] crafts a solitude that becomes, in Diaz's skilled hands, as American as the landscape. In prose that is as bold as the western sky, Diaz has written an unforgettable tale of soulfulness and survival." - Alyson Hagy, author of Boleto
This information about In the Distance was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Photo: Pascal Perich
Hernan Diaz holds a PhD from NYU, and is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Award, and fellowships from the New York Public Library's Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, the The Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center, MacDowell, Yaddo, and the Ingmar Bergman Estate.
Diaz's first novel, In the Distance, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award. He is also the author of a book of essays, and his fiction has appeared in the Paris Review, Granta, Playboy, McSweeney's, and elsewhere. A recipient of a Whiting Award and the William Saroyan International Prize, he has been a fellow at the New York Public Library's Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers. His second novel, Trust, is being translated into more than twenty languages.
... Full Biography
Link to Hernan Diaz's Website
Name Pronunciation
Hernan Diaz: air-NAHN dee-AZ (last syllable like the word "as")
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