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Title details for The Book of Daniel by E.L. Doctorow - Available

The Book of Daniel

A Novel

by E.L. Doctorow
Mark Deakins
Audiobook
2 of 2 copies available
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2 of 2 copies available
The central figure of this novel is a young man whose parents were executed for conspiring to steal atomic secrets for Russia.
His name is Daniel Isaacson, and as the story opens, his parents have been dead for many years. He has had a long time to adjust to their deaths. He has not adjusted.
Out of the shambles of his childhood, he has constructed a new life—marriage to an adoring girl who gives him a son of his own, and a career in scholarship. It is a life that enrages him.
In the silence of the library at Columbia University, where he is supposedly writing a Ph.D. dissertation, Daniel composes something quite different.
It is a confession of his most intimate relationships—with his wife, his foster parents, and his kid sister Susan, whose own radicalism so reproaches him.
It is a book of memories: riding a bus with his parents to the ill-fated Paul Robeson concert in Peekskill; watching the FBI take his father away; appearing with Susan at rallies protesting their parents’ innocence; visiting his mother and father in the Death House.
It is a book of investigation: transcribing Daniel’s interviews with people who knew his parents, or who knew about them; and logging his strange researches and discoveries in the library stacks.
It is a book of judgments of everyone involved in the case—lawyers, police, informers, friends, and the Isaacson family itself.
It is a book rich in characters, from elderly grand- mothers of immigrant culture, to covert radicals of the McCarthy era, to hippie marchers on the Pen-tagon. It is a book that spans the quarter-century of American life since World War II. It is a book about the nature of Left politics in this country—its sacrificial rites, its peculiar cruelties, its humility, its bitterness. It is a book about some of the beautiful and terrible feelings of childhood. It is about the nature of guilt and innocence, and about the relations of people to nations.
It is The Book of Daniel.
Cover art: Jasper Johns, Flag, 1954-55. Art ( c ) Jasper Johns/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    December 17, 2013

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9780804163798
      • File size: 339801 KB
      • Duration: 11:47:55

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      E.L. Doctorow's nonlinear plot poses a challenge for narrator Mark Deakins, who nonetheless imparts an impressive range of characters. His strong performance seizes each moment of Daniel Isaacson's shambles of a life. When he was a child, his parents--characters based on the real-life Julius and Ethel Rosenberg--were executed for conspiring to steal atomic secrets for the Soviet Union in the 1950s. Deakins traces Daniel's coming to terms with the historical context of his loss and provides flawless shifts in Daniel's emotions and perspective. But, as an audiobook, the story is difficult to follow, particularly its time shifts. This novel is a lesson in leftist politics, judgmental attitudes, and public perception, which changed dramatically over the years, leaving Daniel grasping for meaning in a world increasingly indifferent to his parents' sacrifice. A.W. © AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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