THE ONE-EYED MAN

After the death of his wife Sarah, K. is possessed with the notion of clarity. He intervenes in an armed robbery and finds himself a local hero and the star of a reality show. He travels the country with Claire, the store clerk he accidentally rescued. In his hyper-articulate effort to fully understand everything, including violence, he is a Quixote, a sad hero who helps us understand the world.

K., the intriguing narrator of Currie's new novel, joins the ranks of other great American literary creations who show us something new about ourselves. K. is possessed of an exasperation with the world. He is a doomed truth teller whom everyone misunderstands. After his wife Sarah dies, K. loses his metaphorical capacity, becoming so wedded to the notion of clarity that he infuriates everyone, friends and strangers alike.

When he intervenes in an armed robbery, K. finds himself both an inadvertent hero and the star of a new reality television program. Together with Claire, a grocery store clerk with a sharp tongue and a yen for celebrity, he travels the country, ruffling feathers and gaining fame at the intersection of American politics and entertainment. But soon, through a conflagration of biblical proportions, he discovers that the world will fight viciously to preserve its delusions about itself.

K.'s quixotic effort to fully understand the world he lives in makes for a singular and entertaining novel, one which further establishes Ron Currie's position as one of today's rising stars in fiction.

Currie's novel has much to do with our fascination with and affection for violence; certain parts of it read as if they were lifted from the front page news. Currie has won a reputation for being a fresh and innovative writer who likes to test the boundaries of storytelling in a provocative and tenacious way.

Ron Currie is the author of the novel Everything Matters! and the short story collection God is Dead and is often compared to Kurt Vonnegut and Raymond Carver. He lives in Portland, Maine. A writer of unique vision and huge imagination, Currie excels at creating complex, troubled, yet endearing characters. Currie has won the New York Public Library's Young Lions Award for his first book, and an award from the American Academy of Arts and letters that is given annually to a writer of great promise.