Adam the King

WINNER OF THE INDEPENDENT PUBLISHERS GOLD MEDAL FOR LITERARY FICTION IN 2009

WINNER OF THE FOREWORD MAGAZINE SILVER AWARD FOR FICTION IN 2008

 ‘Lewis is a master of the subtle interplay of coincidence and character, the light tripping of events that lead to a disaster that seems at once inevitable and yet shocking’ 
Washington Post

‘The narrative is tense, and Lewis’s well-meaning, blinkered hero is a marvellous creation.’ 
Publishers Weekly

‘Lewis catches the thrill of proximity to America’s eastern WASP aristocracy to an uncomfortable degree: their studied vagueness, their heartiness, the aloofness that cannot be copied.’ 
Los Angeles Times

‘pitch-perfect…quirky, rueful and wise’ 
Kirkus Reviews 

The wedding of a billionaire Adam Bloch and Maisie Maclaren is the event of the year in Clement’s Cove, Maine – a town in which the mansion-like ‘cottages’ of the summering elite sit side-by-side with the modest homes of working-class locals. Adam, a shy, tentative man with a terrible tragedy in his past, has, at fifty-four, reached the moment in his life when he feels he is finally ready to live- and yet he doesn’t quite know what to do with himself. When Maisie asks for a lap pool so she can strengthen her body, debilitated by years of Hodgkin’s disease, Adam approaches his neighbour with a generous offer to buy the plot of land on which her trailer sits to make room for the pool. She refuses, and a chain of events is set in motion that pits Adam against his neighbours, the new rich against those scraping by, outsider against the old-timer, in an escalating struggle that can only end in catastrophe. Taut, swift, and startling, Adam the King depicts the inexorability of fate against the backdrop of the money-mad ’90s.

JEFFREY LEWIS has won a string of awards for his novels including the Independent Publishers Gold Medal for Literary Fiction. He has also received two Emmy Awards and the Writer’s Guild Award for his work as a television writer and producer.

Also by this author, Land of Cockaigne, Meritocracy: A Love Story, Bealport, The Conference of the Birds, Berlin Cantata, The Inquisitor’s Diary, and The Meritocracy Quartet.