《The Devil All the Time》

From the acclaimed author of Knockemstiff —called “powerful, remarkable, exceptional” by the Los Angeles Times —comes a dark and riveting vision of America that delivers literary excitement in the highest degree.

In The Devil All the Time , Donald Ray Pollock has written a novel that marries the twisted intensity of Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers with the religious and Gothic overtones of Flannery O’Connor at her most haunting.

Set in rural southern Ohio and West Virginia, The Devil All the Time follows a cast of compelling and bizarre characters from the end of World War II to the 1960s. There’s Willard Russell, tormented veteran of the carnage in the South Pacific, who can’t save his beautiful wife, Charlotte, from an agonizing death by cancer no matter how much sacrificial blood he pours on his “prayer log.” There’s Carl and Sandy Henderson, a husband-and-wife team of serial killers, who troll America’s highways searching for suitable models to photograph and exterminate. There’s the spider-handling preacher Roy and his crippled virtuoso-guitar-playing sidekick, Theodore, running from the law. And caught in the middle of all this is Arvin Eugene Russell, Willard and Charlotte’s orphaned son, who grows up to be a good but also violent man in his own right.

Donald Ray Pollock braids his plotlines into a taut narrative that will leave readers astonished and deeply moved. With his first novel, he proves himself a master storyteller in the grittiest and most uncompromising American grain.

唐納．雷．波拉克（Donald Ray Pollock）

生於1954年，從小在美國俄亥俄州南部一個名叫諾肯史提鎮的地方長大。波拉克17歲即輟學就業，先是在一家肉類包裝廠工作，後來在一家造紙廠工作了32年之久，可以說他體驗過美國最底層、最閉塞的生活。波拉克五十多歲的時候，進入俄亥俄州立大學學習創意寫作，獲得藝術創作碩士。他開始用筆反映自己的生活，成為出身藍領階層中最有潛力的小說家。

他的第一部作品：《諾肯史提故事集》（Knockemstiff）出版後就備受讚譽、一鳴驚人，獲得了2009年度的羅伯．賓漢作家獎（PEN/Robert Bingham Fellowship for Writers，美國筆會中心頒發給傑出小說家的首部作品），還獲得了來自《紐約時報》等媒體的好評，版權售至英、法、意、西等國。2011年，波拉克57歲的時候出版了自己的首部長篇小說《神棄之地》，不但獲得Amazon書店和獨立書商協會當月選書，《出版人週刊》、《GQ》、《華盛頓郵報》也選為年度最佳小說，版權銷售海外後，亦奪得法國與德國的犯罪小說大獎。