- Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 2012 · Finalist
The Pale King
The Pale King
David Foster Wallace (born 1962)
English editions
Written in EnglishThe Pale King
Little, Brown Paperbacks · United States · 10 April 2012 · Paperback · 592 pages
The Pale King
Little, Brown and Company · United States · 15 April 2011 · Hardcover · 560 pages
The Pale King
Penguin · United Kingdom · 5 April 2012 · Paperback · 592 pages
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In 1985 new recruits arrive at the Internal Revenue Service's Regional Examination Center in Peoria, Illinois, to be trained as examiners of tax returns, where the work is so monotonous that trainees are coached in how to endure boredom. Many of them are odd, lonely or marked by painful pasts; each gets chapters of their own while appearing only at the edges of the others'. Claude Sylvanshine, a 'fact psychic', arrives to gather information for a shadowy official, and forces inside the agency are plotting reforms that would remove the last of the human dignity the job still allows. Assembled from the manuscript left at the author's death, the novel asks what attention, work and heroism can mean in everyday life.
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About the book
- Form
- Novel
- Set in
- United States, 1985
- First published
- 2011
- Author's age
- 49 when first published
- ISBN
-
9780316074230 (Little, Brown and Company, United States)
9780141046730 (Penguin, United Kingdom)
9780316074223 (Little, Brown Paperbacks, United States)
- More
- Wikidata