The Ordinary Seaman by Francisco Goldman

Description

Bibliographic Details

• Author: Francisco Goldman
• Title: The Ordinary Seaman
• Publisher: ‎ Grove Press; First Paperback Edition (January 20, 1997)
• Language: ‎ English
• Format: Trade Paperback – 386 pages
• ISBN-10: ‎ 080213548X
• ISBN-13: ‎ 978-0802135483
• Item Weight: ‎ .75 pounds
• Dimensions: ‎ 5.51 x 1.09 x 8.27 inches
• Book Condition: Used – Very Good (may show minimal discoloration on pages / page edges)
• Cover Condition: Very Good
• Edition: First Paperback Edition

Synopsis:

In this acclaimed novel, the Pulitzer Prize–finalist explores the perils, passions, and adventures of a young Nicaraguan immigrant trapped in Brooklyn.

Named a Best Book of the Year by Newsday, the Los Angeles Times Book Review, the Chicago Tribune, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and Publishers Weekly

In the late 1980s, teenage Sandinista soldier and avowed communist Esteban Gaitán leaves Nicaragua to begin a new life in America. He soon arrives on a desolate Brooklyn pier with fourteen other men to form the crew of the ship Urus.

Elias and Mark, the owners of the Urus, hold the men captive, forcing them to work in a vain attempt to make the rotting vessel seaworthy. Without the means to return home, Esteban remains a virtual prisoner, haunted by the loss of the woman he loved during the war. Eventually learning how to sneak off the ship, he makes nocturnal forays into Brooklyn, where he meets a Mexican immigrant named Joaquina, and begins to plot his permanent escape.

Centering his novel around Esteban, but also telling the stories of his fellow landlocked sailors, Francisco Goldman proves once again that he is “a major talent of great style and soul” (The Miami Herald).

“Often very funny . . . Here, a corner of Brooklyn becomes the exotic and foreign experience, and through Esteban’s eyes it is as mysterious and alluring as Tangiers.” —The Dallas Morning News

About the Author:

Francisco Goldman has published five novels and two books of nonfiction. The Long Night of White Chickens was awarded the American Academy’s Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction and the novel Say Her Name won the 2011 Prix Femina étranger. The Ordinary Seaman was a finalist for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. The Divine Husband was a finalist for the Believer Book Award. The Art of Political Murder won the Index on Censorship T.R. Fyvel Book Award and the WOLA/Duke Human Rights Book Award. The Interior Circuit, published in 2013, was named by the LA Times as one of ten best books of the year and received the Blue Metropolis “Premio Azul.”

He has been a Guggenheim Fellow and a Berlin Fellow. He was a 2018-19 Fellow at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute.

He is the founder and co-director of the Premio Aura Estrada, in honor of his late wife, an award for women of the Americas 35 and under who write creative prose in Spanish. His books have been published in sixteen languages.