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The Flaming Corsage

Author William Kennedy

Paperback

$16.00 US

Penguin Adult HC/TR | Penguin Books

5.06"W x 7.71"H x 0.51"D | 6 oz | 48 per carton

On sale Apr 01, 1997 | 224 Pages | 9780140242706

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The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Ironweed explores the seething, contradictory impulses of our humanity, lusts, and furies in this thrilling novel in the Albany Cycle.

Moving back and forth between the 1880s and 1912, The Flaming Corsage follows the lives of Edward Daugherty, a first generation Irish American who will break out beyond Albany as a playwright, and Katrina Taylor, a beautiful, seductive woman with complex attitudes towards life. Their marriage is a passionate one, but a cataclysmic hotel fire changes it into something else altogether.

William Kennedy’s Albany Cycle of novels reflect what he once described as the fusion of his imagination with a single place. A native and longtime resident of Albany, New York, his work moves from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, chronicling family life, the city’s netherworld, and its spheres of power—financial, ethnic, political—often among the Irish-Americans who dominated the city in this period. The novels in his cycle include, Legs, Billy Phelan’s Greatest Game, Ironweed, Quinn’s Book, Very Old Bones, The Flaming Corsage, and Roscoe.

William Kennedy, author, screenwriter and playwright, was born and raised in Albany, New York. Kennedy brought his native city to literary life in many of his works. The Albany cycle, includes Legs, Billy Phelan's Greatest Game, and the Pulitzer Prize winning Ironweed.The versatile Kennedy wrote the screenplay for Ironweed, the play Grand View, and cowrote the screenplay for the The Cotton Club with Francis Ford Coppola. Kennedy also wrote the nonfiction O Albany! and Riding the Yellow Trolley Car. Some of the other works he is known for include Roscoe and Very Old Bones.

Kennedy is the founding director of the New York State Writers Institute and, in 1993, was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He has received numerous literary awards, including the Literary Lions Award from the New York Public Library, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and a Governor’s Arts Award. Kennedy was also named Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters in France and a member of the board of directors of the New York State Council for the Humanities. View titles by William Kennedy

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Praise for The Flaming Corsage

“Contains more dramatic events, bright dialogue, and strong characters than most novels twice its length...Kennedy’s best novel so far.”—TIME

“Absolutely dazzling...when this author writes about Albany, N.Y., he is, in fact, holding up a mirror to all of American history...[his] fictional terrain can be compared to the Faulknerian South in its complex richness.”—The Washington Post

“Powerful...with vivid characterizations, dead-on dialogue and brilliantly imagined scenes...his most commanding performance since his prize-winning Ironweed.”—The New York Times

“A thrilling descent into the nightmare of history...A tale of two cities, both named Albany, and two aspirations: to rise socially and to remain loyal to your origins.”—The Boston Book Review

“A subtle and ultimately dazzling book by an American master.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer

“Kennedy has made Albany his, as Dickens made London and Proust Paris and Chandler Los Angeles....One of the finest living American novelists.”—Thomas Flanagan

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