'In The Distance' Follows Immigrant's Journey Across Tumultuous 1800s America
The book's setting feels at times post-apocalyptic, as main character Håkan makes his way from San Francisco to New York to find his brother.
Hernan Diaz‘s debut novel “In the Distance” was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the Pen/Faulkner Award for Fiction. The book tells the story of Håkan, an immigrant from Sweden who makes his way through the American West in the early to mid 1800s.
Diaz joins Here & Now‘s Robin Young to talk about the book.
Book Excerpt: ‘In The Distance’
by Hernan Diaz
He had not seen his own face since he had left Clangston. Only splintered reflections on blades, partial glimpses on lids, quivering images on water, or curved caricatures on glass—never a complete, truthful picture of his features. And now, there it was, lying on the desert. His face. Walking alongside the burro, he had crossed the shallow river and kept traveling north for several
