-
Your next favorite book
is waiting.
A compelling call for compassion and resilience in the maw of social dissolution from literary legend James Sallis, master of many genres and Nebula, Edgar, and Shamus–nominated author of Drive.
All I wanted was for my life, when you picked it up in your hands, to have some weight to it.
In a not-so-distant future the United States has fragmented, balkanizing into unstable provinces often at war with one another, and Americans, their great promise not so much lost as forfeited, are encountering the terrors and devastation so much of the world daily lives with. Throughout a land littered with refugees, ruins, orphaned children, soldiers, militia, and fugitives, people go on about their daily lives as best they can.
The five linked stories of World's Edge track the false starts and stall-outs of a nation and civilization trying to rise again, to rebuild, and of individuals caught up in that rebirthing. As ever, the only true history lies in the story of individual lives, in the old rag and bone shop of our hearts.
"While the big ideas are resonant and timely, Sallis offers few surprises and favors telling over showing, making it difficult to connect emotionally with the characters." —Publishers Weekly
"Sallis' tale, or tales, depends for its power on individual insights and a thematic throughline: Apart from all those unbridled conflicts, the nightmare future it presents sounds a great deal like this morning's headlines. A supercut of videos and aphorisms that, like all dystopias, uses prophecies of tomorrow to raise hard questions about today."
—Kirkus Reviews
"A book of five linked stories, each an elegiac, quietly devastating postapocalyptic narrative...These vignettes form a constellation of perspectives that echo, refract, and deepen one another to form a mosaic that mirrors the splintered and disordered world...Intimate and mythic."
—Booklist
"James Sallis is one of our greatest living crime writers ... Try to get his words, his stories, his people out of your head. Just try." —Laura Lippman, author of Lady in the Lake
"Sallis is a sure hand—characters and prose, of course, dialogue, too, but he is also a subtle weaver of plot, with the perfect level of push. His descriptions evoke a place more real than mere realism could render, and his people speak and sweat and live and die and it's all a great pleasure." —Daniel Woodrell, author of Winter's Bone
This information about World's Edge 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.
James Sallis has published eighteen novels, including Drive, which was made into a now-iconic film, and the six-volume Lew Griffin series. He is a recipient of the Hammett Prize for literary excellence in crime fiction, the Grand Prix de Littérature Policière, the Deutsche Krimipreis, and the Brigada 21 in Spain, as well as Bouchercon's Lifetime Achievement Award. His biography of Chester Himes was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and he has been shortlisted for the Anthony, Nebula, Edgar, Shamus, and Gold Dagger Awards.
If you liked World's Edge, try these:
by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Published 2024
The #1 New York Times bestselling author of Between the World and Me journeys to three resonant sites of conflict to explore how the stories we tell—and the ones we don't—shape our realities.
by Ian McEwan
Published 2023
From the best-selling author of Atonement and Saturday comes the epic and intimate story of one man's life across generations and historical upheavals. From the Suez Crisis to the Cuban Missile Crisis, the fall of the Berlin Wall to the current pandemic, Roland Baines sometimes rides with the tide of history, but more often struggles against it.
by Hala Alyan
Published 2022
A rich family story, a personal look at the legacy of war in the Middle East, and an indelible rendering of how we hold on to the people and places we call home.
Harvard is the storehouse of knowledge because the freshmen bring so much in and the graduates take so little out.
Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!
Can you name the title?
Test your book knowledge with our daily trivia challenge!
Your guide toexceptional books
BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.
