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Back to Blood
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Back to Blood is the working title of Tom Wolfe's fourth novel, to be published by Little, Brown in 2009. The novel, to be set in Miami, will focus on the subject of immigration.
e's 1998 novel A Man in Full, about a real-estate mogul in Atlanta during that city's economic boom of the 1990s, was a considerable success. An estimated 1.1 million copies of the book were sold in hardcover alone.
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Back to Blood is the working title of Tom Wolfe's fourth novel, to be published by Little, Brown in 2009. The novel, to be set in Miami, will focus on the subject of immigration.
Background
Wolfe's 1998 novel A Man in Full, about a real-estate mogul in Atlanta during that city's economic boom of the 1990s, was a considerable success. An estimated 1.1 million copies of the book were sold in hardcover alone. Wolfe followed A Man in Full with 2004's I Am Charlotte Simmons, about a sheltered teenager who arrives at a school with a reputation for both academics and athletics, similar to Duke University. The book was considered disappointing by many critics, and sales were much lower: Nielsen BookScan, which covers roughly 70 percent of book sales, placed hardback sales at 293,000 copies and paperback sales at 138,000.
All of Wolfe's essay collections, non-fiction, and fiction had been published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux since his first book The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby in 1965. But after the relatively disappointing sales of I Am Charlotte Simmons, Wolfe was unable to agree on terms for the new novel with his publisher of 42 years. The Associated Press reported that Wolfe had been offered a reduced advance for Back to Blood. An excerpt from the novel was shown to several publishers; Wolfe sold the rights to publish his novel to Little, Brown for a sum of close to US$7 million, according to the The New York Times, in an auction that ended shortly before Christmas of 2007.
Content
Though unfinished, some details of the book have been reported in the media. The novel has been described as Wolfe's take on "class, family, wealth, race, crime, sex, corruption and ambition in Miami, the city where America's future has arrived first." Racial anxieties were a key source of tension in The Bonfire of the Vanities—Back to Blood will similarly feature characters of Cuban, Haitian, Russian, and French ancestry in the melting pot of Miami.
Of the subject matter, Wolfe said, "Two years ago when I got the idea of doing a book on immigration, people would say, 'Oh, that’s fascinating,' and then they would go to sleep standing up like a horse. Since then the subject has become a little more exciting, and in Miami it's not only exciting, it’s red hot." Wolfe, who is well-known for the depth of reporting that goes into his novels, has generated buzz for the novel through his extensive reporting, The Wall Street Journal reported that Miami retailers are already anticipating strong sales for the novel.
The Miami Herald recently reported: "Back to Blood characters include a young nurse of Cuban ancestry married to a famous French-émigré sex doctor; a freshman journalist on the trail of a Russian-mob-comes-to-Miami story; his wary editor; a second-generation Cuban police officer; a woman of Haitian descent who passes for Anglo."
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