Memoir from Antproof Case
Books / Hardcover
Books › Fiction › Historical
ISBN: 0151000972 / Publisher: Harcourt Brace, April 1995
An elderly American living in Brazil reminisces about his various lives as World War II ace, multimillionaire investment banker, insane asylum inmate, thief, murderer, lover, and protector of the innocent
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An old American who lives in Brazil is writing his memoirs. An English teacher at the navel academy, he is married to a woman young enough to be his daughter and has a little son whom he loves. He sits in a mountain garden in Niteroi, overlooking the ocean, and carries with him a Walther P-88.As he reminisces and writes, placing the pages carefully in his antproof case, we learn that he was a World War II ace who was shot down twice; an investment banker who met with popes and presidents; a multimillionaire; and a man who was never not in love. He was the thief of the century, a murderer, and a protector of the innocent. In his adolescence he spent years in an insane asylum in Switzerland. And all his life, he waged a valiant, losing, one-man battle against the world's most insidious enslaver: coffee.Mark Helprin's astounding prose combines adventure, satire, flights of transcendence, and high comedy with vivid and poignant memories of a Hudson Valley and New York City that no longer exist.
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