The Bridge of San Luis Rey, Thornton Wilder
The Bridge of San Luis Rey, Thornton Wilder
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The Bridge of San Luis Rey
A Novel

Author: Thornton Wilder

Narrator: Thom Rivera

Unabridged: 4 hr 17 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Caedmon

Published: 05/05/2020

Synopsis

""As close to perfect a moral fable as we are ever likely to get in American literature."" —Russell Banks""There are books that haunt you down the years, books that seem to touch and stir something deep inside you. . . . Wilder's The Bridge of San Luis Rey is of this kind."" —The Independent (London)The authorized, original edition of Thornton Wilder's Pulitzer Prize-winning classic with a foreword by acclaimed author Russell Banks and an afterword by Wilder's nephew, Tappan Wilder, with illuminating documentary material about the novel and its rich literary history""On Friday noon, July the twentieth, 1714, the finest bridge in all Peru broke and precipitated five travelers into the gulf below."" This immortal sentence opens The Bridge of San Luis Rey, one of the towering achievements in American literature, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, and a novel still read throughout the world.Brother Juniper, a Franciscan monk, witnesses the tragic event. Deeply moved, he embarks on a quest to prove that it was divine intervention, not chance, that led to the deaths of the five people crossing the bridge that day. Ultimately, his search leads to a timeless investigation into the nature of fate and love, and the meaning of the human condition.Copyright (c) 1927 by Albert & Charles Boni, Inc. Copyright renewed (c) 1955 by Thornton Wilder. Copyright 2002 by the Wilder Family L.L.C. Foreword copyright (c) 2003 by Russell Banks. Afterword copyright (c) 2003, 2014 by Tappan Wilder.

About Thornton Wilder

Thornton Wilder (1897–1975) was an accomplished novelist and playwright whose works, exploring the connection between the commonplace and cosmic dimensions of human experience, continue to be read and produced around the world. The Bridge of San Luis Rey, one of his seven novels, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1928, as did two of his four full-length dramas, Our Town (1938) and The Skin of Our Teeth (1943). The Matchmaker was adapted as the musical Hello, Dolly! Wilder also enjoyed enormous success with many other forms of the written and spoken word, among them teaching, acting, opera, and film, including his classic screenplay for Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt (1943). The writer’s many honors include the Gold Medal for Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the National Book Committee's Medal for Literature.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Vit on March 29, 2025

The Bridge of San Luis Rey is a beautifully written book full of eternal questions. If there were any plan in the universe at all, if there were any pattern in a human life, surely it could be discovered mysteriously latent in those lives so suddenly cut off. Either we live by accident and die by acc......more

Goodreads review by Henry on October 24, 2024

On the 20th of July, 1714, in the Spanish colony of Peru five people descended to eternity when they fell into an enormous abyss. Ironically as colorful birds sung sweetly nearby a beautiful scene of snowy mountains far away seen, and green vegetation with pretty trees below. The noon collapse of th......more

Goodreads review by Emily May on September 19, 2016

"Some say that we shall never know, and that to the gods we are like the flies that the boys kill on a summer day, and some say, on the contrary, that the very sparrows do not lose a feather that has not been brushed away by the finger of God." You might think a book so focused on God and faith w......more

Goodreads review by Lea on October 10, 2021

“Some say that we shall never know, and that to the gods we are like the flies that the boys kill on a summer day, and some say, on the contrary, that the very sparrows do not lose a feather that has not been brushed away by the finger of God.” The Bridge of San Luis Rey is a Pulitzer Prize winning s......more

Goodreads review by Valeriu on August 02, 2023

O meditație asupra relației dintre hazard și necesitate: totul se petrece pentru că așa a vrut Dumnezeu sau totul se petrece la întîmplare? În data de 20 iulie 1714, în amiaza unei zile de vineri, puntea de rafie - zisă a Sfîntului rege Ludovic - se rupe și 5 oameni pier. A fost un hazard sau lucrare......more

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