TRISTAN EGOLF

A literary sensation published to outstanding accolades in America and around the world, Lord of the Barnyard was one of the most auspicious fiction debuts of recent years. Now available in paperback, Tristan Egolf's manic, inventive, and painfully funny debut novel is the story of a town's dirty laundry -- and a garbagemen's strike that lets it all hang out. Lord of the Barnyard begins with the death of a woolly mammoth in the last Ice Age and concludes with a greased-pig chase at a funeral in the modern-day Midwest. In the interim there are two hydroelectric dam disasters, fourteen tavern brawls, one shoot-out in the hills, three cases of probable arson, a riot in the town hall, and a lone tornado, as well as appearances by a coven of Methodist crones, an encampment of Appalachian crop thieves, six renegade coal-truck operators, an outraged mob of factory rats, a dysfunctional poultry plant, and one autodidact goat-roping farm boy by the name of John Kaltenbrunner. Lord of the Barnyard is a brilliantly comic tapestry of a Middle America still populated by river rats and assembly-line poultry killers, measuring into shot glasses the fruits of years of quiet desperation on the factory floor. Unforgettable and linguistically dizzying, it goes much farther than postal.

El protagonista de esta novela, Charlie Evans, es un violinista frustrado cuya carrera profesional no parece avanzar por buen camino. Una noche tras una terrible y absurda actuación con un grupo de Heavy Metal, decide tirar a la basura su violin y empezar una nueva vida. Para sobrevivir, Charlie acepta un trabajo en una tienda y se traslada a vivir a un motel de mala muerte, donde viven los personajes mas esperpenticos de la America profunda. Su nueva existencia se ve ligada a Greetz, un joven perdedor, que acompaña a Charlie en sus salidas por bares de mala muerte con actividades semiilegales. Sin embargo, su amistad se vera truncada cuando Charlie se enamore de Louise Gascoygne.