“Macabre and compelling,” this crime fiction classic is a darkly psychological 1940s noir following the rise and fall of a carnival grifter (The New York Times).
Now an Oscar-nominated film from Academy Award–winning director
Guillermo del Toro, starring Bradley Cooper, Cate Blanchett, Rooney Mara, and Toni Collette
Nightmare Alley begins with an extraordinary description of a carnival-show geek—alcoholic and abject and the object of the voyeuristic crowd’s gleeful disgust and derision—going about his work at a county fair. Young Stan Carlisle is working as a carny, and he wonders how a man could fall so low. There’s no way in hell, he vows, that anything like that will ever happen to him.
And since Stan is clever and ambitious and not without a useful streak of ruthlessness, soon enough he’s going places. Onstage he plays the mentalist with a cute assistant (before long his harried wife), then he graduates to full-blown spiritualist, catering to the needs of the rich and gullible in their well-upholstered homes. It looks like the world is Stan’s for the taking. At least for now.
One of the 20th century’s most darkly beautiful works of crime fiction, Nightmare Alley is an unforgettable story of carny life, spiritualism, and a con man of merciless resolve.
