The Flame Alphabet

Front Cover
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, Jan 17, 2012 - Fiction - 304 pages

In The Flame Alphabet, the most maniacally gifted writer of our generation delivers a novel about how far we will go in order to protect our loved ones.
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The sound of children's speech has become lethal. In the park, adults wither beneath the powerful screams of their offspring. For young parents Sam and Claire, it seems their only means of survival is to flee from their daughter, Esther. But they find it isn't so easy to leave someone you love, even as they waste away from her malevolent speech. On the eve of their departure, Claire mysteriously disappears, and Sam, determined to find a cure for this new toxic language, presses on alone into a foreign world to try to save his family.

Selected pages

Contents

Section 1
3
Section 2
8
Section 3
11
Section 4
14
Section 5
22
Section 6
33
Section 7
37
Section 8
41
Section 17
150
Section 18
176
Section 19
178
Section 20
194
Section 21
212
Section 22
222
Section 23
228
Section 24
238

Section 9
52
Section 10
57
Section 11
81
Section 12
87
Section 13
101
Section 14
109
Section 15
123
Section 16
131
Section 25
242
Section 26
254
Section 27
267
Section 28
271
Section 29
275
Section 30
279
Section 31
285
Copyright

Other editions - View all

The Flame Alphabet
Ben Marcus
Limited preview - 2012
The Flame Alphabet
Ben Marcus
Limited preview - 2012
The Flame Alphabet
Ben Marcus
No preview available - 2012
View all »

Common terms and phrases

alphabet asked believe beneath blanket body breath cake child Claire Claire's cold couldn’t dark didn’t diffi cult door Esther eyes face failed feel fell felt fi eld fi nished fi rst field filled final finally find fine finger first floor Forsythe fucking hair hands head hear heard hole inside Jewish kids kind klieg lights knew language language martyr LeBov letter listener looked Marta meant mouth Murphy neighborhood never night numbers offi orange cable Perhaps person pictured Claire pulled quarantine Rabbi Burke radio rhetorical modes Rochester salt scripts seemed serum sick silence skin smallwork smell smoke someone sometimes sound speak speech spoke stared stood stopped sure synagogue technicians test subjects thing thought took toxicity voice waiting walked wall wanted wasn’t watch we’d wire wire magazine woods words

About the author (2012)

Ben Marcus is the author of three books of fiction:�The Age of Wire and String, Notable American Women,�and�The Flame Alphabet,�and he is the editor of�The Anchor Book of New American Short Stories.�His stories have appeared in�Harper’s, The New Yorker, Granta, Electric Literature, The Paris Review, McSweeney’s, Tin House,�and�Conjunctions.�He has received the Berlin Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Writers’ Award, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in fiction, three Pushcart Prizes, and the Morton Dauwen Zabel Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He lives in New York with his wife and children.

Bibliographic information

TitleThe Flame Alphabet
Vintage Contemporaries
AuthorBen Marcus
PublisherKnopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2012
ISBN0307957519, 9780307957511
Length304 pages
Subjects ›  › 

Fiction / Family Life / General
Fiction / Literary
Fiction / Thrillers / Suspense
  
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