The Fortress of Solitude

The Fortress of Solitudeis the story of Dylan Ebdus growing up white and motherless in downtown Brooklyn in the 1970s. It's a neighborhood where the entertainments include muggings along with games of stoopball. In that world, Dylan has one friend, a black teenager, also motherless, named Mingus Rude. As Lethem follows the knitting and unraveling of their friendship, he creates an overwhelmingly rich and emotionally gripping canvas of race and class, superheros, gentrification, funk, hip-hop, graffiti tagging, loyalty, and memory.The Fortress of Solitudeis the first great urban coming of age novel to appear in years.

<b>JONATHAN LETHEM </b>is the author of five novels, including<b> Gun, With Occasion Music</b>, and <b>Girl in Landscape</b>. His most recent, <b>Motherless Brooklyn</b>, was named Novel of the Year by <i>Esquire </i>and won The National Book Critics Circle Award and the Salon Book Award. He is also the author of the story collection, <i>The Wall of the Sky</i>, <i>the Wall of the Eye</i> and the novella <i>This Shape We’re In.</i> He edited The Vintage Book of Amnesia, guest-edited The Year’s Best Music Writing 2002, and was the founding fiction editor of <i>Fence Magazine.</i> His writings have appeared in <i>The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, McSweeney’s</i>, and many other periodicals. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.<br><br><br><i>From the Hardcover edition.</i>