Tobias Wolff

“Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” es una obra maestra del suspense y la confusión adolescente que nació de una canción de Bob Dylan y de un caso de principios de los 60 que la autora leyó e

En Vida de este chico, Tobias Wolff narra sus recuerdos de niño y adolescente, cuando, divorciados sus padres, recorría con su madre con la que formaba una auténtica «pareja telepática» las carreteras de Estados Unidos de un lado a otro del país. Toby o Jack, como le gusta llamarse a sí mismo en homenaje a su adorado Jack London absorberá entre mapas, whisky, peleas a puñetazos, amistades y traiciones, la esencia de esa América de los años cincuenta que marcará irremediablemente su juventud. Una juventud con toques minimalistas y dickensianos a un tiempo y que sirve aquí a su autor para trazar con humor y ternura el retrato de un tiempo pasado en el espejo de su propia imagen.

Tobias Wolff''s first two books, In the Garden of the North American Martyrs and Back in the World, were a powerful demonstration of how the short story can ''provoke our amazed appreciation'' (New York Times Book Review). In the years since he''s written a third collection, The Night in Question, as well as a pair of genre-defining memoirs (This Boy''s Life and In Pharaoh''s Army), the novella The Barracks Thief, and, most recently, a novel, Old School. Now he returns with fresh revelations - about biding one''s time, or experiencing first love, or burying one''s mother - that come to a variety of characters in circumstances at once everyday and extraordinary: a retired Marine enrolled in college while her son trains for Iraq, a lawyer taking a difficult deposition, an American in Rome indulging the gypsy who''s picked his pocket. In these stories, as with his earlier, much-anthologized work, he once again proves himself, according to the Los Angeles Times, ''a writer of the highest order: part storyteller, part philosopher, someone deeply engaged in asking hard questions that take a lifetime to resolve.''

This book concentrates some of his best work in one place and reflecting the breadth of his gifts in the short form.

The author of "The Barracks Thief" and "Hunters in the Snow" recreates his boyhood experiences, relating how he and his mother travelled throughout the United States, and tracing his experiences and changes from young boy to manhood against the background of a violent and wildly optimistic America.

OLD SCHOOL

La difícil adolescencia del autor junto a su madre y al novio de ésta son usadas por Tobias Wolff para construir un primer libro de memorias. Sin abandonar la sencillez y agilidad de sus relatos breves conseguira dejar una profunda huella en todos aquellos que se sumerjan en sus paginas.

The author of the genre-defining memoir "This Boy's Life" now gives readers his first novel--at once a celebration of literature and delicate hymn to a lost innocence of American life and art.

At one prestigious American public school, the boys like to emphasise their democratic ideals -the only acknowledged snobbery is literary snobbery. Once a term, a big name from the literary world visits and a contest takes place. The boys have to submit a piece of writing and the winner receives a private audience with the visitor. But then it is announced that Hemingway, the boys'' hero, is coming to the school. The competition intensifies, and the morals the school and the boys pride themselves on - honour, loyalty and friendship - are crumbling under the strain. Only time will tell who will win and what it will cost them.