Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Sep 2009
224 pages
Genre: Short Stories
Publication Information
A practicing physician, Terrence Holt has written prize-winning stories for publications like TriQuarterly and Zoetrope but has operated, until now, under the literary radar. This collection, which gathers one novella and seven stories written over an entire career, leaps across genres and millennia—from small-town America to the depths of space—exploring the dark corners of human nature in a style that recalls the nineteenth-century American masters and the moral complexity of Conrad. Whether chronicling a plague that ravages a New England town and threatens the human race, an Egyptologist's obsessive quest for a tomb that holds the secrets of immortality, or the anguish of a son who keeps his father's beating heart in a jar, Holt conjures up mysterious worlds in which life joins death in a danse macabre of brilliantly inventive language, wicked wit, and spectacular imagination. A stunning debut by one of our most promising writers.
"Starred Review. This collection represents a life's work of stories that are not well known outside of the readership of literary journals. That's about to change, and it's a good thing." - Library Journal
"Starred Review. This collection, with its allusions to mythology and tragic conundrums, demands intelligence and rewards the reader with Borgesian riches." - Publishers Weekly
"Stories for those who wish to enter enigmatic and uncomfortable spaces." - Kirkus Reviews
"In the Valley of the Kings is a work of terrific intelligence and terrifying imagination." - Aleksandar Hemon, finalist for the National Book Award for The Lazarus Project
"Holt is my favorite writer. Primarily because he's awesome but also (and no less important) because he is sui generis." - Junot Diaz, winner of the Pulitzer Prize - Bookforum
"Like the tales of Poe and Hawthorne, these stories are claustral, eerie and entirely exhilarating." - Michael Gorra, author of The Bells in Their Silence
This information about In the Valley of the Kings was first featured
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Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Terrence Holt is a writer and an internist specializing in geriatric medicine, teaching and practicing at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill.
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