Sherman Alexie

Kauan sitten kuolleeksi luultu blueslaulaja Robert Johnson ilmestyy syrjäiseen intiaanireservaattiin paholainen kintereillään. Johnsonin taianomainen kitara päätyy erään reservaatti-intiaanin käsiin: Thomas Tekee Tulet on sopeutumaton tarinankertoja ja muusikko. Kitara kehottaa Thomasia perustamaan rockbändin, ja tästä alkaa ontuva odysseia, joka kuljettaa intiaanikolmikkoa muihin reservaatteihin, rähjäisiin cowboybaareihin, Seattleen ja lopulta aina New Yorkiin asti. Taustatukea bändille antaa legendaarinen muusikoiden ystävä, myyttinen Suuri Äiti. Romaani on koominen tarina alistussuhteista, musiikin voimasta, kuolemasta ja lunastuksesta sijoitettuna nykyajan intiaanien maailmaan. Alexien kielenparsi tuo keveydessään mieleen Kurt Vonnegutin. Sherman Alexie on vuonna 1966 syntynyt kirjailija, käsikirjoittaja, elokuvaohjaaja ja standup-koomikko. Hän on itse kasvanut kirjassa kuvatussa Wellpinitin kaupungissa, ja on ollut raittiina 23-vuotiaasta lähtien. Esikoisromaani Intiaaniblues on voittanut American Book Award -palkinnon. Alexie on myös levyttänyt romaanin laulutekstit Jim Boydin kanssa, ja kaksikko on esiintynyt Indigo Girlsin lämmittelijänä. Alexien käsikirjoittama elokuva Smoke Signals sai vuonna 1998 yleisön palkinnon Sundance-elokuvafestivaaleilla.

"Part thriller, part magical realism, and part social commentary, Indian Killer . . . lingers long past the final page."--Seattle WeeklyA national best seller, Indian Killer is arguably Sherman Alexie's most controversial book to date--a gritty, racially charged literary thriller that, over a decade after its first publication, remains an electrifying tale of alienation and justice. A serial murderer called the Indian Killer is terrorizing Seattle, hunting, scalping, and slaughtering white men. Motivated by rage and seeking retribution for his people's violent history, his grizzly MO and skillful elusiveness both paralyze the city with fear and prompt an uprising of racial brutality. Out of the chaos emerges John Smith. Born to Indians but raised by white parents, Smith yearns for his lost heritage. As his embitterment with his dual life increases, Smith falls deeper into vengeful madness and quickly surfaces as the prime suspect. Tensions mount, and while Smith battles to allay the anger that engulfs him, the Indian Killer claims another life. With acerbic wit and chilling page-turning intensity, Alexie takes an unflinching look at what nurtures rage within a race both colonized and marginalized by a society that neither values nor understands it.

Flight follows this troubled foster teenager - a boy who is not a 'legal' Indian because he was never claimed by his father - as he learns that violence is not the answer. The journey for Flight's young hero begins as he's about to commit a massive act of violence. At the moment of the decision, he finds himself shot back through time to resurface in the body of an FBI agent during the civil rights era, where he sees why 'Hell is Red River, Idaho, in the 1970s'. Red River is only the first stop in an eye-opening trip through moments in American history. He will continue travelling back to inhabit the body of an Indian child during the battle at Little Bighorn and then ride with an Indian tracker in the nineteenth century before materialising as an airline pilot jetting through the skies today. During these travels through time, his refrain grows: 'Who's to judge?'This novel seeks nothing less than an understanding of why human beings hate. Flight is irrepressible and fearless - Sherman Alexie at his most brilliant.

Leaving the Spokane Indian Reservation to attend an all-white high school, Junior struggles to find his place in his new surroundings in order to escape his destiny back on the reservation. 75,000 first printing.

On the verge of commiting an act of violence, a troubled, orphaned Indian teenager finds himself hurtled through time an into the bodies of a civil rights era FBI agent, an Indian child during the battle at Little Big Horn, a nineteenth- century Indian tracker, and a modern-day airline pilot, before returning to himself, forever altered by his experiences. Original. 100,000 first printing.

Sherman Alexie has been hailed as "one of the best writers we have" (The Nation). Reservation Blues is his "irresistibly stunning debut novel" (San Francisco Chronicle). One day legendary bluesman Robert Johnson appears on the Spokane Indian reservation, in flight from the devil and presumed long dead. When he passes his enchanted instrument to Thomas-Builds-the-Fire--storyteller, misfit, and musician--a magical odyssey begins that will take them from reservation bars to small-town taverns, from the cement trails of Seattle to the concrete canyons of Manhattan. This is a fresh, luxuriantly comic tale of power, tragedy, and redemption among contemporary Native Americans.

Sherman Alexie offers nine poignant and emotionally resonant stories about Native Americans who find themselves at personal and cultural crossroads. In 'The Life and Times of Estelle Walks Above', an intellectual feminist Spokane Indian woman saves the lives of dozens of white women all around her, to the bewilderment of her only child.

Reflecting the experience of Native Americans caught in the midst of personal and cultural turmoil, a new collection of short fiction by the award-winning author of Reservation Blues includes such works as "The Life and Times of Estelle Walks Above," "What You Pawn I Will Redeem," and "Do You Know Where I Am?" Reader's Guide available. Reprint. 75,000 first printing. 75,000 ad/promo.

Drama. Native American Studies. One of the most vital of the younger writers. Watch this guy. He's making myth--Joy Harjo. Displays a mastery of language, a breadth of vision, and an astonishing range of voice and emotion--Studies in American Indian Literature. The high spirit of Crazy Horse is alive in this book and dances powerfully--American Book Review. THE BUSINESS OF FANCYDANCING is writer/director Sherman Alexie's first film since his 1998 smash success Smoke Signals, which he wrote. A ceremony of poetry, song, dance, humor, grief and memory, THE BUSINESS OF FANCYDANCING is the story of one man's art and life, and the messy collision between the two.

Ball games, cars, and romances: the icons and battlefields of modern life. In twenty-two linked stories, with infinite humour and pathos, Sherman Alexie explores some of the major issues of our time: the pull between the urban and the rural, the future and the past;

Robert Johnson, legendary blues man, arrives at the Spokane Reservation looking for relief. So, with Victor Joseph, Junior Polatkin and Chess and Checkers Warm Water, he hits the road, taking their four-and-a-half-chord rock and blues band to reservation bars, small town taverns, and the urban landscapes of Seattle and Manhattan.

Poetry. Fiction. Published in 1992, well before Sherman Alexie became well-known as the screenwriter for the film SMOKE SIGNALS, THE BUSINESS OF FANCYDANCING has now been turned into a film with none other than Alexie himself in his directorial debut. The screenplay for the movie, which recently won the Audience Award at the San Francisco Film Festival, is loosly adapted from this book. Many film-goers will want to visit or revisit the elegaic poems and stories that set the tone for the film itself. "In an age when many 'Native American' writers publish books that prove their ignorance of the real Indian world, Sherman Alexie paints painfully honest visions of our beautiful and brutal lives" Adrian C. Louis."