This book offers a profound study of human fallibility, and is easily the best book I've ever read on politics.

I have put this book on my schedule at least a dozen times in the last two years and then passed it up because I felt I just could not tackle a book about politics. Stupid me. This book is about political shenanigans, lust for power, and greed, but it is so much more about human relationships, the complex ways in which our lives are tied to the people who float in and out of our lives, and how we choose to judge ourselves and others.

At one point in the narrative Willie Stark says that everything in life is bad, and that goodness is something man must create from the bad he is given. It is much “the ends justify the means” for Willie, and we see, like a slow-motion reel, as that philosophy leads him and his followers deeper into a quicksand. It is this that makes the novel work so perfectly, for Penn Warren does not create any perfect individuals here, each of them is flawed and very, very real. One of his major themes is that of responsibility. When are we responsible for what happens to us or around us? Can we shuffle off bad events to fate, or do we have to accept our role in them, however small or untraceable that role might be?

There is that weighty, intelligent element of this book, and believe me when I say this book is about something on every single page; but there is also the remarkable command of language that comes from the heart of the poet who is Robert Penn Warren. Long passages of lyrical quality are peppered throughout, and not once did I have the temptation to skip a single word. In fact, I read many of them more than once.

Her eyes were glittering like the eyes of a child when you give a nice surprise, and she laughed with a sudden throaty, tingling way. It is the way a woman laughs for happiness. They never laugh that way just when they are being polite or at a joke. A woman only laughs that way a few times in her life. A woman only laughs that way when something has touched her way down in the very quick of her being and the happiness just wells out as natural as breath and the first jonquils and mountain brooks. When a woman laughs that way it always does something to you. It does not matter what kind of a face she has got either. You hear that laugh and feel that you have grasped a clean and beautiful truth. You feel that way because that laugh is a revelation. It is a great impersonal sincerity. It is a spray of dewy blossom from the great central stalk of All Being, and the woman’s name and address hasn’t got a damn thing to do with it. Therefore, the laugh cannot be faked. If a woman could learn to fake it she would make Nell Gwyn and Pompadour look like a couple of Campfire Girls wearing bifocals and ground-gripper shoes with bands on their teeth. She could get all society by the ears. For all any man really wants is to hear a woman laugh like that.
Come on–is that not heavenly?

Finally, there is an entire chapter, about half-way through the book, that is devoted to another story entirely. Our narrator, Jack Burden, recounts a history he researched for his college thesis, and tells us the history of Cass Mastern. I was engrossed in this tale, but wondered how Penn Warren was ever going to link it to the other, modern, political tale he was writing. Suffice it to say, he does, and with such a delicate hand that it seems like a gossamer thread that was lying, waiting to be pulled at just the right moment. I think this might have felt like a disruption in the wrong hands, with Penn Warren it is just another bit of magic.

I am reading all the Pulitizer winners for a challenge I set for myself in 2016. I have not always been impressed with the acumen of the Pulitzer Committee, but this time, oh my, yes, they got it right. This book is timeless, for it is about humanity, and in many ways, no matter the outward transformations time brings, humans do not change.

I don't know how to write this review, so I probably won't write much of one. This book isn't perfect--it's too long, and I can think of several scenes that could be cut out without damaging the story, character development, and theme. However, even the parts that could be cut out are so beautifully written and funny and moving that I don't even care. I love Jack Burden. He's one of my all-time favorite first-person narrators, more beloved than Nick Carroway and Jake Barnes, even. He's up there with Fitzchivalry Farseer from Robin Hobb's Farseer novels. I love his sarcasm and wit and the way he tells the story--detached, distanced, yet clearly personal.

This book is known as a book about politics, but it's really not about politics. Politics comes into play, but so do football, Prohibition, and adultery. Among other things. This book is really about a man and his worldview and how it changes but mostly why it changes. How "Little Jackie" goes from being an Idealist to believing in the Great Twitch to finally believing in the power of will and doom and the interconnectivity of human life. I love these characters. It felt so good coming back to them. I love and hate Willie. I love Lucy and even Sadie. I like Anne, and I respect the Judge and Governor Stanton.

One thing I noticed this time was how much Adam is like Quentin from The Sound and the Fury and Ashley from Gone with the Wind. I also noticed how much Willie is like Jay Gatsby. It was fun to see those connections. There's a lot to analyze and discuss in this book, but I don't want to because I love it so much. I was worried I wouldn't like it as much this time around, but I liked it even more, maybe. The ending did disappoint me because I remembered it differently and also because it's a little long in wrapping up after the climax, but the last line is great, and I enjoyed the journey from beginning to end with these characters and this story.

This is a novel whose prose is astounding on every level. Robert Penn Warren was an immensely talented writer and poet, and he brings these gifts to bear in this wonderful novel. Rarely would I say that a 600+ page novel doesn't have a few words to shave here and there, but I can't say that about All The King's Men. I would not want to be the editor who thought he could whittle down this writer's great work.
ATKM is the story of Jack Burden (metaphor of a name) and his long (too long) growth process. Jack has what we would call "issues", and like most of us he has the ability to overcome them, but first he must grow up. This novel is the story of that process.
ATKM has been called a novel about politics, but I think that politics serves a secondary function in this text. It is through his involvement in the underbelly of the political world that the narrator (Jack) learns how to live in the real one.
Even though there are a multitude of characters in this text, each one is finely wrought and Warren never seems to delve into caricature. With the huge cast of characters in the novel this is no small feat. One of the greatest glories in this text is that there is not a single character who is likable or without flaws. And yet, as I read I found that I really did not hate any of them. In fact, I felt I knew many of them. That is because they are so lovingly and accurately crafted by the author. Jack states towards the novel's close about one of the text's more dastardly characters, Tiny Duffy, "and for the first time I saw him as human." That really is one of the main themes of the text. How all of us, in all of our ugliness and beauty , are still divinely human. When we see the good and ill in others and don`t pass judgment, we can then recognize and accept it in ourselves. Jack Burden is the unique narrator in that his almost passive views of others allows the reader to engage with them without prejudice.
The colloquialisms and speech of the deep south in the early half of the twentieth century are delivered here with the accuracy and the warmth of someone who knew intimately the world which he was writing about. Rarely have I read a novel with such a keen sense and development of time and place.
ATKM also has many subplots and diversions that are complete narratives in themselves, and are satisfying to that end. Yet they all also tie into the larger themes of the novel as a whole.
Read this novel closely, be prepared to reread certain parts, and then sit back and lustfully digest one of the greatest of American novels. You will learn something about yourself along the way.

I have had this book lying around forever and only just now got to it, owing to my 2019 resolution. It started off pretty electric--the dialogue is taut and the foreshadowing is masterful. This book is very much in the sweet spot of influence, where its pungency and style are clearly echoed in the many other great and influential books that followed in its wake and emulated its affects. The writing is both belletristic and masterful--RPW is the only person to have won the Pulitzer in writing and in poetry, and the latter skill comes across in the narrative very clearly. He is an adept writer and has a way with a phrase.

For all of its initial momentum, though, "All the King's Men" unraveled a bit across its deceptively short 440 pages. The quality of writing remained high, but RPW started interpolating stories and anecdotes of questionable use, and the careful unfolding of plot lines began to give way to a more relaxed, less engaging style. Also, for all of RPW's careful attention to detail, many of the plot twists began to feel contrived. This is perhaps apparent from the beginning, where the main character, a governor, and an influential judge all live on the same street, which furnishes about 80% of the main characters in this book. I'm not the most active reader, and so I rarely predict the direction of a plot, but I think I saw every twist and turn in this one long before it was explicitly broached in the text. I also would have loved more of the Boss and less of his henchman, our main character. The Boss is such a fascinating person, and the build-up to his governorship would have been a fascinating thing to gander at.

But I'm glad I read it. I will definitely read him again--this is such a foundational American South text, and a great political thriller to boot. A great beginning to my resolution and a powerful rejoinder to the idea that famous and revered books do not deserve their reputations.

Ένα μεγάλο, κλασσικό, αμερικάνικο μυθιστόρημα στα όρια του ποιητικού λόγου. Απολαυστικό μέχρι την τελευταία σελίδα. Αρκεί να έχεις υπομονή και να αφήσεις τον Τζακ να σε ταξιδέψει στο Νότο του μεσοπολέμου. Φανταστικό, ίσως το καλύτερο βιβλίο που διάβασα φέτος!

Роман "Все королівське військо", за який автор отримав Пулітцерівську премію, який вважається визначним для американської літератури, та має реальних прототипів, відправляє нас на самий південь США 30-х років минулого століття*. Оповідачем є безамбіційний та цинічний молодик на імʼя Джек Берден, що є рішалою у Хазяїна - корумпованого популістичного губернатора штату Віллі Старка, який робить "добро зі зла", бо лише так воно народжується. Джек частина "війська", бо він зі скрупульозністю історика за фахом та колишнього журналіста знайде бруд на навіть найчеснішого громадянина та правильний підхід до справжнього мораліста з непохитними ідеалами, хай би то був його найкращий друг.

Мене давно зацікавила книга, хоч лише про цю її політичну сторону й чув, але це лише антураж, декорації для справжньої історії. Тут ви прочитаєте також і про безтурботну молодість, перше кохання, зраду, дружбу, філософські роздуми та помилкові істини. Це роман про прийняття минулого та відповідальність за свої вчинки.

У нас книга українською була видана у 1986 році, що стало для мене сюрпризом, накладом, який, на жаль, є недосяжним для сучасного вітчизняного ринку, у 115 000 (!!!) примірників. Своєю чергою це дозволить вам зараз з легкістю знайти десятки оголошень на ОЛХ за смішну ціну та відчути запах старої книги (наче з бібліотеки взяв), який, fun fact, насправді виділяють часточки, утворені під час розкладання чорнила та сторінок. Переклад зовсім трохи архаїчний, але чудовий.

На останок ще попереджу, що перші 150~ сторінок були важкими, бо автор спочатку подає події нелінійно, з невеликою кількістю діалогів та купою описів та міркувань оповідача, проте після - не відпускає, мов напружений трилер.

* якщо в цій історії ми радше слідкуємо за життям вихідців з середнього та вищого класу, і політиканів, то роман "Грона гніву" Стейнбека, що відбувається на тому ж півдні в той самий час, розповідає про поневіряння найбідніших верств населення Америки. Можете також звернути увагу.

All the King’s Men is often promoted as a novel about politics, occasionally even the quintessential novel of American politics. While I did enjoy the portrait of Willie Stark as an archetype political boss, more interesting, to me, is the struggle of the narrator, Jack Burden, to overcome his nihilistic doubts in the face of a world governed by power. Jack claims to overcome his nihilism (“the Great Twitch”) by coming to an understanding of the morality of his own life (the personal and inter-personal) in relation to the ethical valuations of history (on the stage of the world).

So I read the larger narrative of the book in the light of Jack’s search for meaning, rather than seeing Jack as merely a narrator to the story of Willie Stark. From this perspective I think All the King’s Men tells a compelling story of Stark as a politician who, despite by all outward appearances of being driven merely by a quest for power, can in fact believe in the righteousness of his actions. He accomplishes this through an elaborate scheme of means-end reasoning and a vision of purpose that captivates or even short-circuits his own moral calculus. Willie Stark constructs a narrative of meaning through his campaign for a hospital that will serve all people, regardless of income, and is not mired in the exigencies of political reality that becomes for him a trump card in any consideration of the morality of his actions.

The ethically pious and occasionally self-righteous Doctor Adam Stanton serves as a foil to Stark, with their lives ultimately meeting in a tragic end as though destined by their inability to grasp the ethical possibilities of their world that the narrator, Jack Burden, eventually realizes. Adam’s attempt to live ethically through nonparticipation with evil and political power is sacrificed with the realization of his father’s ethical shortcomings; he then steps into the world of power by agreeing to oversee the construction of Willie Stark’s hospital (creating odd parallel between the two in that the hospital serves for both of them as the symbolic touchstone for an ethical life). Yet this critical step, away from a sanctified idealism into the practical world of compromise leads eventually to his tragic confrontation with Willie Stark. In the end, his defining action is not aimed at any practical end but is rather either an emotionally-driven strike against the objectification of his own (and his sister’s) moral compromise. The reader is left to ponder whether this outcome is this simply the natural result of his step away from a “kingdom of ends” in agreeing to join Stark’s hospital or a product of his inability to cope with the fallen nature of humanity.

That’s what I got out of it anyway. For a more critical view highlighting literary shortcomings and racial and gender issues, read “All the King’s Men—A Case of Misreading?” by Joyce Carol Oats in the New York Times Book Review.

All the King's Men written in 1946 by author Robert Penn Warren won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1947. And what a book it was. Years ago on one of my first trips to New Orleans, I was enthralled with the culture, the history and the mystique that just screamed from the the banks of the Mississippi River. And one of my most memorable moments was riding over the Huey P Long Bridge spanning Lake Ponchetrain while the bus driver regaled us all with his many stories about Huey P Long. Because you see, Huey P Long was a populist and the flamboyant governor of the state of Louisiana in the late 1920s. And this sprawling historical fiction novel is based on his life and career in Louisiana government in the fictional character of Governor Willie Stark. But it is really the story of Jack Burden, his aide and as a former newspaper correspondent, deep into historical research. Now I have to admit, that I loved the character of Jack Burden on so many levels as he attempts to come to terms with where he is in this world.

"The end of man is knowledge, but there is one thing he can't know. He can't know whether the knowledge will save him or kill him. He will be killed, all right, but he can't know whether he is killed because of the knowledge which he has got or because of the knowledge which he hasn't got and which if he had it, would save him. There's the cold in your stomach, but you open the envelope, you have to open the envelope, for the end of man is to know."

And the favorite saying of Governor Willie Stark was:

"Man is conceived in sin and born in corruption and he passeth from the stink of the didiee to the stench of the shroud. There is always something."

But Jack Burden trying to come to terms with his life heads climbs into his roadster and starts driving west to the California coast for a week as he grapples with new realizations in his life. And a memorable quote:

And you can go back in good spirits, for you will have learned two very great truths. First, that you cannot lose what you have never had. Second, that you are never guilty of a crime which you did not commit. So there is innocence and a new start in the West, after all. If you believe the dream, you dream when you go there."

All the King’s Men opens sharply, throwing the reader into the midst of things. Jack Burden, a young ex-reporter/ writer, a guy who walked out on his PhD, finds himself in the service of Willie, a raising political force. Willie, whose background doesn’t promise a successful politician, but who is ready to fight against the odds. Jack is there by Willie’s side, not because of the money, not because of the power, not because of anything like that. Why is Jack there? Jack isn’t sure himself. It is a complex question, one that keeps popping through the novel, one that gets answered many times and yet remains open to interpretations. Willie, who is commonly called the boss, says that it is because it is in Jack’s nature? Is it so? But what kind of nature are we talking about?

Jack Burden is, true to his surname, a burdened man. Burdened with both his and his future past, emotionally detached from the society in a way that made me think of Nick from The Great Gatsby. Nick came from the South, didn’t he? Nick sort of tags along with Gatsby, doesn’t he? Jack does the same. Jack puts his life on hold caught up in another’s man charisma, but while Nick just lets things happen without overthinking them in detail, Jack overthinks everything. Jack is a cynic, but a very intelligent cynic and an honest one as well. You could say that all cynics are honest, but you would be wrong for not all bitterness is founded on fact, and even if Jack is bitter as hell, he holds tight on the facts. Nick can be pretty honest in his observations as well, but he doesn’t seem as scientifically attached to facts as Jack is. One can understand why Jack has to be like that, for Jack is on a quest for truth even if he doesn’t know it. Jack is a student of history and there is a lot of examination of history in this novel. You see, there is this whole parallel story line happening in the past. There is this story of adultery, cruelty and slavery, this tragic story Jack walked out on because he couldn’t comprehend it. Or perhaps Jack was afraid of understanding it? Of owing up to it precisely because it would mean owing up to his own shortcomings?


Within this novel, there is an examination of a short piece of American history, an individual story that is possibly also a story about society. There is that PhD story Jack walked out on because he couldn’t understand Cuss (the subject of his research). This story of a young man who committed an adultery with his friend’s wife, an act that lead to tragic consequences. There is Jack, the history student, who couldn’t understand what he was researching or claimed so. Perhaps because Jack’s own life was falling apart before it even began. Jack’s relationship with his mother, who kept changing husbands and whom he regards with a mixture of admiration and coldness. Yes, I can see how this relationship could have kept Freud entrained for a month. Jack who renounces the only true fatherly figure he has known in favour of Willie. Speaking of which, there is a lot of psychological portraying in this one and history plays a big part it all the psychological analysis. Throughout the novel, the history keeps getting mixed up in everything. Jack’s personal history gets mixed up with everyone else’s. There are also political schemes and it politics history can be a tricky thing. Jack is often hired to unravel past mysteries. Jack sets out to find dirt on most honest of men, a man who was like a father to him. Jack does it too, yet only to learn that as he uncovers one mystery, he finds out more. Perhaps he also learns something about himself. Perhaps that is why he does it.


How reliable is Jack as a narrator? He is reliable in a cynic kind of way, in a way intelligent person is reliable. Seeing a part of the picture, Jack tells his story and he catches you in his cold web. Jack gets you worked up, at least that’s the effect that he had on me, an effect mixed with a sense of frustration of his own coldness. His detachment might make him more perceptive but still, it is apparent that much remains hidden from Jack himself. As the novel progresses, past episodes get recounted, we get to know more of Jack’s personal history. Characters’ past experiences are often revealed in fragments, but there is so much strength in the writing that you can’t help but get caught up in their past and present tragedies. Jack’s initial emotional detachment, his sense of being lost in the world, his passivity, his observation of society, all the things that make me think of Nick, make them both and at the same time- both a reliable and unreliable narrator. Nick and Jack do have a lot in common, as different as they are. They both crave for friendship, and not just any kind of friendship. A friendship with a person who is somehow more ‘real’ than others, not necessarily in the sense of being virtuous (for Gatsby and Willie certainly aren’t angels) but in their pursuit of that elusive something. In essence, I think both narrators (Nick and Jack) are perfect for the novels they find themselves in. Nick and Jack’s personality differs, and so does the approach to their portrayal, but there are some behaviour patterns they both share. Both respected a flawed man, a corrupt man, and set him on a pedestal. Perhaps because the dream was worth it? Jack doesn’t exactly love Willie, the politician, at least not in an obvious way. You can’t get that sense of sincere friendship and connection, not at very start. Why does Jack do it? Why do Jack and Nick do it? Why do they feel that one man can hold together all the paradoxes of American dream, why do they feel they have to serve the man and the dream even if they sense doom? Is it because Nick and Jack are attracted to something great that exists in this Gatsby or Willie fellow? Is that why Jack stays by Willie’s side? I don’t know what to think about Willie. I just don’t. He remains elusive to me, elusive in a way Gatsby is elusive. Were they both dreamers?

I've finally read this novel the day before yesterday. I stayed up late reading it, the last part that is. The last 200 pages or so I’ve read in the last couple of days, but I toiled reading the beginning and it honestly took me ages to reach the middle. Yes, it took me quite a long time to read this novel. I started it with a hard to explain sensation of dread. Not because of its reputation, the Pulitzer and the critical acclaim it won and so on, but because of those opening pages. Something about the opening paragraphs made me suffer internally. They sure were heavy. I sensed sadness, bitterness and brilliance that made me think of Tennessee Williams and William Faulkner. The writing was more than good, it was brilliant, I could see that straight away. It was heavy, but it was brilliant.

The descriptions were quite lengthy, not something you would expect in a novel that is if not events filled then with plenty of things going on. No, you don’t except those stubbornly long descriptions in a novel that moves as fast as this one does. The descriptions were like a world of their own. They were like something staring you in your face. Their quality of those descriptions was good, precise, sometimes poetical and sometimes surgical. The contrasted somehow both the plot and the portrayal of characters, as they were not a part of the novel, but sometimes that takes a life of its own. That much I could gather from those first few pages. The writing that flowed, flowed steadily and strongly like a might river, but it wasn’t easy to read, not for me, not then and perhaps it never will be. My brain refused the prose initially, my mind pulled away from the sentences and I laboured over the beginning of the book. From the elaborate descriptions and the N word that was making me feeling slightly nauseated and that felt out of place.


Never have I felt that a writer is trying to prove something right away as with the beginning of this novel. There is something fierce about it, almost like he is showing off, telling you- look, what I can do! Read how I can write! It was like he was trying to make us look into an open wound. Yes, that is how I felt reading this one. He was the surgeon dissecting everything without any sympathy or mercy. He with his writing that was painfully precise, he was showing off every step of the day, the way someone who is really good at his job does and knows is. In that kind of way. Maybe I’m borrowing those surgical descriptions from the novel itself but perhaps these metaphors are perfectly suitable for a book review of All the King’s Man. Oddly, I almost have up on this one, as promising as the writing looked. Should I continue reading or should I give up? I remember feeling pretty down for March was exhausting. March was an endless stream of bad news. Do I need to feel this? Do I need to get work out about characters who don’t exist, and yet perhaps they do, the way all good literary characters really exist and in the way they are (or sure seem) more real than us. I kept reading because I couldn’t do anything else. I kept reading all the while I was feeling this book sitting heavy on my eyebrows, heavy on my chest and heavy on my soul. I kept reading and soaked it all in.

I felt for Sadie, the torn wrench. Sadie who never had a chance. Sadie who was good at one thing and knew it, but it was all wrong, and there was no way it could have been right. And it was a tragedy. And she knew it. When love gets mixed up with the one thing you’re good at, and then there is a betrayal and you lose it all. You who never had a chance. Yes, I feel for you Sadie. I felt for Jack, the storyteller. I hated him but I understood him. I hated his detachment, his depression and his intelligence. I hated his remarks that made perfect sense. I hated him every step of the way. I hated Jack with passion, and perhaps I still do. I hated Jack’s lack of common decency. But that doesn’t change the fact that he is the perfect narrator for this book. Nor does it change the fact that I kind of ended up if not loving him then something of the sort. Perhaps because Jack had kept searching for that truth. Despite everyone and despite himself. I felt for Jack’s mother who had been so unhappy. I felt sorry for her aging face and for her tragedies. For the life she will never have. For the infinite loneliness she condemned herself to. I felt for Anne, crazy Anne who didn’t know what she wanted. Who felt more like a twisted twin of Jack’s, than of her own brother. A brother she had surely loved. I felt for Adam, for the purity of his soul, for not being able to change what he was any less than perhaps any of us can. I felt for them all. Even for Sugar Boy. Even for Sugar Buy.


Half way into this book, I knew it will break my heart. I knew it, but I kept reading. I know that it will break my heart the way every play Tennessee Williams had ever written wrote broke my heart, the way every novel that William Faulkner had ever written left a scar in my soul. The way The Help broke my heart. The way South breaks my heart. South in its complexity, Souths is its elegance and its craziness. South where nobody wants to be rich rich, where a man commits a crime to save his plantation but it is not from greed, it’s from something more complex, it is because the plantation is part of himself, South in which everyone is a part of everyone and everyone’s craziness and passion, vice and virtue, ugliness and beauty are innocence in a way that is hard to explain. Where everything seems interconnected like roots of trees in an ancient forest. That kind of south. South of tragedies. South of sadness. South of honesty. South that can produce such writers and produce them in abundance. It’s the South. This novel is abundant in whatever makes South of USA what it is and yet it is so universal. Universal in a way all great literature is universal.

* You can read the rest of my review on my blog, it is too long to be posted here in its full form.
http://bookmagiclove.blogspot.ba/2018...

ΑΡΙΣΤΟΥΡΓΗΜΑ!
Λέξη, λέξη, φράση, φράση ξεδιπλώθηκε η ιστορία, με τα πρόσωπα να βυθίζονται στην δίνη των εσωτερικών αδυναμιών τους, μαγεμένοι από την φιλοδοξία και το χρήμα. Το νόημα σαφές με το συμπέρασμα τους να δίνει το άλλοθι στις όποιες αποφάσεις τους: "Το καλό προκύπτει από το κακό"!
Οι χαρακτήρες υφαίνονται με μοναδικό τρόπο, η ιστορία τρέχει με εναλλασσόμενους ρυθμούς και χαρακτήρες, η κοινωνία σμπαραλιάζεται από εξουσιαστές αλλά βυθίζεται από τους παρατρεχάμενους της.
Νοιώθεις ένα μαύρο πέπλο να σε σκεπάζει όσο διαβάζεις το βιβλίο. Μια ασπρόμαυρη ταινία αποτυπωμένη στις σελίδες.
Θα μπορούσα να καταγράψω δεκάδες προτάσεις, φράσεις από το βιβλίο εντυπωσιάζοντας σας. Όχι όμως. Η κάθε φράση, το νόημα της είναι συνδεδεμένο με την ύφανση αλλά και τους χαρακτήρες του βιβλίου. Χώρια χάνει αυτή την κρούστα που δημιουργεί αυτό που αποκαλούμε αριστούργημα.

Ένα μόνο σας συνιστώ. Ξεκινήστε να διαβάζετε το βιβλίο από ΣΗΜΕΡΑ.... Α και κάτι τελευταίο. Καλού κακού έχετε δίπλα κανά στυλό να γράφετε ή να υπογραμμίζεται προτάσεις, φράσεις παραγράφους του βιβλίου. Δεν θα το ... χαλάστε. Θα του δώστε τη ζωή αλλά κυρίως θα ταυτιστείτε με τους χαρακτήρες απολαμβάνοντας τη ροή του κειμένου
ΚΑΛΗ ΑΝΑΓΝΩΣΗ

The Friend of Your Youth is the only friend you will ever have, for he does not really see you. He sees in his mind a face that does not exist anymore.
The Friend of Your Youth is your friend because he does not see you anymore.