Peter: An (A)Historical Romance

by Jeffrey DeShell

Fiction. PETER: AN (A)HISTORICAL ROMANCE, a controversial new novel by one of our most important, innovative, and uncompromising authors re-envisions Herman Melville's Pierre in 1999 Los Angeles. An orphaned child of privilege, Peter enjoys a snug existence full of things--to eat, to wear, and to play with. But his world is rocked when he meets a young Palestinian woman, Reham, who claims to be Peter's half-sister. DeShell's excessive, digressive...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0970316526
• ISBN13: 9780970316523
• Release Date: June 2006
• Publisher: Starcherone Books
• Length: 400 Pages

Customer Reviews

In A Just World: Oprah's Next Pick

Jeffrey DeShell outdoes Melville at the peak of his social satire with Peter, a novel about a junk character with a junk head, overspilling with the accumulated trash of a junk existence. Peter is the worst of 1990s America and its overstock of globalization-fueled garbage, and his near implosion when confronted with the rest of the world is a profound treat for anyone who's sick of the constant braying about American innocence we've had to endure for the last half-decade. It's the kind of book you'll want to beat a Clintonite to death with, and has the saddest and most horrific final act we've read in years.