Hailed in the US as a Native-American TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, and winner of the US National Book Award, THE ROUND HOUSE is Louise Erdrich's undeniable - and unmissable - masterpiece.
A mother is brutally raped by a man on their North Dakota reservation where she lives with her husband and thirteen-year-old son, Joe. Traumatized and afraid, she takes to her bed and refuses to talk to anyone - including the police.
While her husband, a tribal judge, endeavours to wrest justice from a situation that defies his keenest efforts, young Joe's world shifts on its child's axis. Confused, and nursing a complicated fury, Joe sets out to find answers that might put his mother's attacker behind bars - and make everything right again. Or so he hopes.
THE ROUND HOUSE is a poignant and abundantly humane story of a young boy pitched prematurely into an unjust adult world. It is a story of vivid survival; and it confirms Louise Erdrich as one of America's most distinctive contemporary novelists.
The Round House is an extraordinary, engrossing novel, which should live long in the memory. - The Independent on Sunday
The Round House showcases [Erdrich's] extraordinary ability to delineate the ties of love, resentment, need, duty and sympathy that bind families together...[a] powerful novel. - New York Times
Erdrich has achieved an impressive trick; a spellbinding read, an earnest message and fierce emotional punch. - Sunday Telegraph
A rare insight into the dilemma of an adolescent caught between two cultures. - Mail on Sunday
A compelling coming-of-age story ... [Erdrich] is a gifted storyteller who brings all these characters and tales together with sureness and grace. - Indpendent
Echoes of Stand By Me ... a classic coming-of-age narrative. - The Observer
Detailed and nuanced, it is Erdrich's portrayal of the Native American reservation that makes The Round House stand out as a work of literary fiction. - Sunday Express
Emotionally compelling...Joe is an incredibly endearing narrator, full of urgency and radiant candor...the story he tells transforms a sad, isolated crime into a revelation about how maturity alters our relationship with our parents, delivering us into new kinds of love and pain. - Washington Post
Louise Erdrich, a member of the Turtle Mountain Band and of Chippewa, is the author of many novels as well as volumes of poetry, children's books, and a memoir of early motherhood. Her novel The Round House won the National Book Award for Fiction. Love Medicine and LaRose received the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction. Erdrich lives in Minnesota with her daughters and is the owner of Birchbark Books, a small independent bookstore. Her most recent book, The Night Watchman, won the Pulitzer Prize. A ghost lives in her creaky old house.