A Flag for Sunrise

Second Stone I have read after Dog Soldiers; a darker but less cynical updating of Conrad’s Nostromo. It starts off fairly somber with a structure that reminds me of an Altman film; with the book switching between various characters having conversations that slowly are showing the canvas on which th......more

Just re-read this because I assigned it to a freshman literature class with a varying degree of success. I'm not sure anyone loved it, many of them were interested in it, even if it took them a long time to read. For all its knife-wielding drug runners and revolutionaries and reactionary counter-rev......more

This was my fourth attempt to get into this book. My earlier readings were always disrupted by the arch tone of the novel, the dense and (seemingly) over-the-top sentences that one finds in most of Robert Stone's work. Such writing is so out of favor in the contemporary workshop environment of conte......more

A dark book of ideas and political intrigue that will kick you in the head, and keep kicking, never stopping until the sun rises over the Caribbean on the book's last page. As a critical picture of American interference in the affairs of other countries, it compares well with The Quiet American. Tha......more

Compelling, perfectly written, and bleak. I mean...bleak.......more