Allen Kurzweil was named a "Best Young American Novelist" by Granta for A Case of Curiosities, his first novel. He has been the recipient of Guggenheim and Fullbright Fellowships, and a 1999 Fellow of the New York Public Library for Scholars and Writers. His fiction has been honored in the United States, France, Italy, and Ireland. He lives in Providence, Rhode Island.
PRAISE FOR" A CASE OF CURIOSITIES"
"What John Fowles did for the 19th century with The French
Lieutenant's Woman and Umberto Eco did for the 14th with The Name
of the Rose . . . Kurzweil now does for the late 18th century with
A Case of Curiosities. [A] captivating novel."-San Francisco
Chronicle
"Brilliantly playful . . . More like a joint effort by Henry
Fielding and John Barth, it is clever indeed but also riotous,
melodramatic and erotic, full of lore and lewdness and crackling
with ideas and exhilarated imagination."-Chicago Tribune
The narrator buys a box of randomly assembled objects at a Paris auction. It is a life box, the memento hominem of Claude Page, an extraordinarily gifted 18th-century French clockmaker with a passion for the mechanical and a great zest for life. As a young man, he is taken in by a God-hating abbe who employs him to paint naughty scenes, with moving parts, on the faces of watches and clocks. ``The tree of knowledge is there for us to climb,'' counsels his mentor. ``Climb it. Ignore the fences. Swing from branch to branch . . . . You, Claude, are a discoverer.'' In Paris, later, Claude struggles to construct a fabulous talking automaton, with which he hopes to earn his fortune. But fortune has a different plan for Claude. The eccentrics and bohemians who touch Claude's life are one and all grotesques of compelling interest and comic force. Kurzweil tells a real story; it is funny, human, and exciting all at once. Highly recommended for general collections. BOMC and Quality Paperback selections; previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 9/1/91.-- David Keymer, SUNY Inst. of Technology, Utica
PRAISE FOR" A CASE OF CURIOSITIES"
"What John Fowles did for the 19th century with The French
Lieutenant's Woman and Umberto Eco did for the 14th with The Name
of the Rose . . . Kurzweil now does for the late 18th century with
A Case of Curiosities. [A] captivating novel."-San Francisco
Chronicle
"Brilliantly playful . . . More like a joint effort by Henry
Fielding and John Barth, it is clever indeed but also riotous,
melodramatic and erotic, full of lore and lewdness and crackling
with ideas and exhilarated imagination."-Chicago Tribune
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