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  • Published: 15 February 2015
  • ISBN: 9781616954840
  • Imprint: Soho Press
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 272
  • RRP: $32.99

Martin And John



A brilliant, fugue-like and ultimately heartrending story of love and survival at the height of the AIDS crisis.

Dale Peck’s debut is a tour de force in which Martin and John find each other again and again: in a trailer park, a high-end jewelry store, a Kansas barn, and later, in New York City, living under the shadow of the AIDS epidemic. Though their names remain the same, their identities are constantly shifting, creating a fractured view of loss and desire in the early years of the AIDS crisis. Vaulting through self and history,

Martin and John is one of the most remarkable novels to emerge from an America ravaged by disease, and one of the finest and most complex love stories of the ’90s. Martin and John is the first volume of Gospel Harmonies, a series of seven stand-alone books (four have been written) which follow the character of John as he attempts to navigate the uneasy relationship between the self and the postmodern world.

  • Published: 15 February 2015
  • ISBN: 9781616954840
  • Imprint: Soho Press
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 272
  • RRP: $32.99

About the author

Dale Peck

Tim Kring is an acclaimed screenwriter and television producer. He is the creator and executive producer of Heroes. Dale Peck is the author of nine books, including most recently the novels Body Surfing and Sprout.

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Praise for Martin And John

"Dale Peck is what we've been waiting for, a new talent with vast ambitions and a voice like an angel chewing on broken glass. Martin and John launches an important career."--Michael Cunningham

"These are elegant, nightmarish variations on two compressed, mordant themese: love in the time of AIDS and the eternally fragile politics of domestic desire. The somber lyricism, the fresh conception of form, the profoundly human grasp of character all suggest this touchingly young writer will have a great future."--Edmund White

"[Dale Peck's] wisdom about human feelings, his talent for translating those feelings into rose and his sophisticated mastery of literary form all speak to a maturity that belies his twenty-five years. In short, a stunning debut."--Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times Book Review

"Martin and John is one of the more inspired and brilliant novels that deal not only with AIDS but with the grief and bereavement that are inescapably a part of every life."--David Kaufman, The Nation