Back to Blood

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Back to Blood is the fourth and final novel by Tom Wolfe . The story takes place in Miami , Florida and mainly deals with the social tensions between the "native" Americans and the numerous immigrant groups, especially the Cuban Americans , those from Haiti , France and Russia . Wolfe is known for carrying out extensive investigations at the location of his novel settings for his reports.

action

The main character of the novel is the Cuban-born police officer Nestor Camacho, who initially does his duty on a patrol boat that is mainly used against smugglers and illegal immigrants. In an adventurous operation, he succeeds in pulling a "compatriot" who fled Fidel Castro's Cuba down from a 20-meter-high sail mast of a ship, thereby saving him from a potentially fatal crash. At the same time, however, he prevents this Cuban from being recognized by the state authorities as a legal immigrant. Because he had not yet set foot on American soil and was therefore considered illegal.

Nestor's family does not regard him as a hero, like his police colleagues, but as a traitor. This problem runs through the whole book. Nestor seeks a way to leave this family situation in the Cuban enclave of Hialeah in Miami by trying to persuade his girlfriend Magdalena to marry and move. But this reveals to him that he - Nestor - is not her only friend, but that she has other relationships. A world collapses for Nestor, since all of his friendly relationships have now broken and all he has left is his job as a police officer. But there, too, he got into trouble, as there were tensions among the various ethnic groups among the police.

Nestor and Magdalena go through various situations that arise in Miami's mix of peoples, which makes the complex social situation of the city very clear. The growing influence of the rich Russians is particularly emphasized. a. the world-famous art fair Art Basel Miami Beach in the Miami Beach Convention Center is increasingly determined.

At the end of the novel, Nestor is returned to the normal police service and a new love story with a young Haitian woman of French descent emerges.

background

Wolfe's 1998 novel A Man in Full (Eng. "A whole guy") about a real estate agent in Atlanta during the economic boom there in the 1990s was very successful. It is estimated that the hardcover version alone has sold approximately 1.4 million books. In the following novel Ich bin Charlotte Simmons from 2004, Tom Wolfe describes the story of a sheltered teenager in a fictional prestigious university, in which the young woman is forced to deal with mentally poorly gifted athletes, constant sexual demands and strange academic customs. This book was significantly less successful than its predecessor and was also judged more negatively by the critics. Allegedly only 293,000 copies of the hardcover version have been sold, of the paperback version 138,000. After this, in comparison to his earlier novels, clear failure, Wolfe was no longer able to achieve the usual contractual conditions with his regular publisher Farrar, Straus & Giroux, where his books had been published since 1965. Wolfe changed publishers and went to Little, Brown and Company . Allegedly he received an amount of 7 million USD for his new novel - shortly before Christmas 2007. Even before the novel was finished, excerpts and expressions of opinion appeared in the media.

reception

The book was released on October 23, 2012 and ranked fourth on the New York Times bestseller list for three weeks .

Expenses (selection)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Tom Wolfe Leaves Longtime Publisher, Taking His New Book New York Times, Jan. 3, 2008