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A Novel
by James Dickey
National Book Award-winning author James Dickey's New York Times bestseller Deliverance is an unforgettable tale of violent action and profound inner discovery—the basis for the Academy Award-nominated film starring Burt Reynolds and John Voight.
Four middle-class suburban men decide to embark on a three-day canoe trip down a particularly wild section of a river in Georgia. For Ed Gentry, Bobby Trippe, Drew Ballinger, and Lewis Medlock, the trip represents a break from their daily routines, a chance for adventure with few real risks, and the last occasion to see a beautiful valley before the river is dammed up. Lewis, an enthusiastic outdoorsman and champion archer, is obsessed by the desire to pit himself against nature.
When two of the friends are viciously attacked by mountain men, their mild adventure becomes a fight for their very lives. Men prey upon one another, the treacherous river becomes a graveyard for those without the strength or the luck to survive, and Ed, forced to lead his friends to safety, calls upon primal instincts buried within him to achieve deliverance.
"A novelist of power and skill. A marvel of description that will make your muscles ache. A brilliant and breathtaking adventure." — The New Yorker
"A novel of stunning power." — The Nation
"Stomach-churning thrills…A mind-shattering nightmare in the wilderness, surging ahead on sheer power…there are few writers like James Dickey and few novels as successful, as terrifying and as good as Deliverance." — Washington Post
This information about Deliverance was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Dickey was born in Atlanta, Georgia. After serving as a pilot in the Second World War, he attended Vanderbilt University. Having earned an MA in 1950, Dickey returned to military duty in the Korean War, serving with the US Air Force. Upon return to civilian life Dickey taught at Rice University in Texas and then at the University of Florida. From 1955 to 1961, he worked for advertising agencies in New York and Atlanta. After the publication of his first book, Into the Stone (Middletown, Conn., 1962), he left advertising and began teaching at various colleges and universities. He became poet-in-residence and Carolina Professor of English at the University of South Carolina.
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