{"product_id":"book-dhf2","title":"Child of Light","description":"\u003cb\u003eThe first and definitive biography of one of the great American novelists of the postwar era, the author of \u003ci\u003eDog Soldiers\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003e A Flag for Sunrise\u003c\/i\u003e, and a penetrating critic of American power, innocence, and corruption\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eRobert Stone (1937-2015), probably the only postwar American writer to draw favorable comparisons to Ernest Hemingway, Graham Greene, and Joseph Conrad, lived a life rich in adventure, achievement, and inner turmoil. He grew up rough on the streets of New York, the son of a mentally troubled single mother. After his Navy service in the fifties, which brought him to such locales as pre-Castro Havana, the Suez Crisis, and Antarctica, he studied writing at Stanford, where he met Ken Kesey and became a core member of the gang of Merry Pranksters. The publication of his superb New Orleans novel\u003ci\u003e, Hall of Mirrors \u003c\/i\u003e(1967), initiated a succession of dark-humored novels that investigated the American experience in Vietnam\u003ci\u003e (Dog Soldiers\u003c\/i\u003e, 1974, which won the National Book Award), Central America (\u003ci\u003eA Flag for Sunrise\u003c\/i\u003e, 1981), and Jerusalem on the eve of the millennium (\u003ci\u003eDamascus Gate,\u003c\/i\u003e 1998).\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAn acclaimed novelist himself, Madison Smartt Bell was a close friend and longtime admirer of Robert Stone. His authorized and deeply researched biography is both intimate and objective, a rich and unsparing portrait of a complicated, charismatic, and haunted man and a sympathetic reading of his work that will help to secure Stone's place in the pantheon of major American writers.","brand":"Penguin Random House","offers":[{"title":"Audiobook","offer_id":49327746613552,"sku":"BDdhf2","price":27.5,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0879\/2784\/9264\/files\/410850-dhf2-Square.jpg?v=1733698100","url":"https:\/\/downpour.com\/products\/book-dhf2","provider":"Downpour","version":"1.0","type":"link"}