Barkskins: A Novel

Barkskins: A Novel

From Annie Proulxâ€”the Pulitzer Prize-Â and National Book Award-Âwinning author of The Shipping News and â€œBrokeback Mountain,â€ comes her masterwork: an epic, dazzling, violent, magnificently dramatic novel about the taking down of the worldâ€™s forests.

In the late seventeenth century two penniless young Frenchmen, RenÃ© Sel and Charles Duquet, arrive in New France. Bound to a feudal lord, a â€œseigneur,â€ for three years in exchange for land, they become wood-cuttersâ€”barkskins. RenÃ© suffers extraordinary hardship, oppressed by the forest he is charged with clearing. He is forced to marry a Miâ€™kmaw woman and their descendants live trapped between two inimical cultures. But Duquet, crafty and ruthless, runs away from the seigneur, becomes a fur trader, then sets up a timber business. Proulx tells the stories of the descendants of Sel and Duquet over three hundred yearsâ€”their travels across North America, to Europe, China, and New Zealand, under stunningly brutal conditionsâ€”the revenge of rivals, accidents, pestilence, Indian attacks, and cultural annihilation. Over and over again, they seize what they can of a presumed infinite resource, leaving the modern-day characters face to face with possible ecological collapse.

Proulxâ€™s inimitable genius is her creation of characters who are so vividâ€”in their greed, lust, vengefulness, or their simple compassion and hopeâ€”that we follow them with fierce attention. Annie Proulx is one of the most formidable and compelling American writers, and Barkskins is her greatest novel, a magnificent marriage of history and imagination.
Country USA
Brand Scribner Book Company
Manufacturer Scribner
Binding Hardcover
ItemPartNumber 9780743288781
ReleaseDate 2016-06-14
UnitCount 1
EANs 9780743288781

Country	USA
Brand	Scribner Book Company
Manufacturer	Scribner
Binding	Hardcover
ItemPartNumber	9780743288781
ReleaseDate	2016-06-14
UnitCount	1
EANs	9780743288781

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