“Often funny, sometimes disturbing...Mr. Coen has sounded the jagged dissonance of the American experience.” -- Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, The New York Times
In Gates of Eden, the co-creator of such films as Fargo and Blood Simple delivers blackly humorous and often unsettling vignettes...All the Coen brother’s trademarks are here...funny...compelling stories.” -- USA Today
“A distincitive voice and an offbeat worldview...All of these stories take place in Coen Brothers Land, a parallel universe similar to our own--except it’s weirder, funnier, and better edited.” -- New York Times Book Review
“The discriminating viewer who enjoyed [Coen’s] distinctive and quirky films will like the equally unconventional Gates of Eden. Coen delights in juxtaposing tone, character, and settin to comic and chilling effect.” -- Washington Post
A middle-aged man beheads his wife, then calmly explains how she drove him to it . . . A fat little mafioso is going to war--in the clean, well-mannered streets of Minneapolis . . . A Jewish boy watches with wonder the rise and fall of a Hebrew school rebel--and sees the sadness at the heart of his own family. . . . Welcome to the world of Ethan Coen, one half of the filmmaking team that has unleashed a visionary, brutal, and uproarious portrait of America in such screen classics as "Fargo and "Raising Arizona. Now Ethan Coen translates that vision to the printed page--in fourteen keenly imagined, sharply etched short stories. Blending parody with pathos, making the heinous heartbreaking, Coen demonstrates his unique gift for stunningly inventive narrative, brutal irony, offbeat characters, and crackling dialogue, delivering everything you would expect from such an original imagination.
From the Back Cover
A middle-aged man beheads his wife, then calmly explains how she drove him to it ... A fat little mafioso is going to war -- in the clean, well-mannered streets of Minneapolis...A Jewish boy watches with wonder the rise and fall of a Hebrew school rebel -- and sees the sadness at the heart of his own family.... Welcome to the world of Ethan Coen, one half of the filmmaking team that has unleashed a visionary, brutal, and uproarious portrait of America in such screen classics as Fargo and Raising Arizona. Now Ethan Coen translates that vision to the printed page -- in fourteen keenly imagined, sharply etched short stories. Blending parody with pathos, making the heinous heartbreaking. Coen demonstrates his unique gift for stunningly inventive narrative, brutal irony, offbeat characters, and crackling dialogue, delivering everything you would expect from such an original imagination.
About the Author
Ethan Coen and his brother, Joel Coen, are multiple Oscar-winning American filmmakers who have written and directed a number of acclaimed motion pictures, including Raising Arizona, Blood Simple, Fargo, and the 2007 Best Picture Academy Award winner, No Country for Old Men.
