Train Dreams

An epic miniature of one man's life journey through the American West at the turn of the twentieth century.

Robert Grainier is a day labourer in the American West, felling the trees that feed the railways. It is the start of the twentieth century, and the world is changing at a rapid pace.

Life is fragile in the wilds of the frontier; disease and forest fires are rife. Buffeted by the loss of his family, Grainier journeys, struggling to make sense of the bewildering changes transforming the nation.

Rich and muscular, sweeping and incantatory, Train Dreams is an epic in miniature: an elegy to the ravaged beauty of a lost landscape, and a haunting indictment of the cost of our modern way of life.

Short-listed for Pulitzer Prize 2012 (UK)

'A masterpiece... one of the best prose writers in our time' - Michael Ondaatje
'A work of extraordinary power and consummate skill... A masterpiece' - Observer
'I don't think there is a sentence in the book that isn't perfectly made' - Ann Patchett, New York Times

DENIS JOHNSON was the author of six novels, three collections of poetry, and one book of reportage. His novel Tree of Smoke was the 2007 winner of the National Book Award. He died in 2017.

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