You Have to Be Careful in the Land of the Free - Tapa blanda

In the superbly crafted and critically acclaimed You Have to Be Careful in the Land of the Free, James Kelman has created an unforgettable character and a darkly comic portrait of a post-9/11 America.

Jeremiah Brown, a Scottish immigrant in his early thirties, has lived in the United States for twelve years. He has moved as many times, from the East Coast to the West Coast and back again, all in the hope his luck would change. To add to his restlessness and indecision, he now has a nonrefundable ticket to Glasgow--by way of Seattle, Canada, Iceland, and England--to visit his mother. On his last night in the States, Jeremiah finds himself in a town south of Rapid City, moving from bar to bar, attracting and repelling strangers, losing count of the beers he has drunk. All the while he is haunted by memories and by an acute sense of foreboding.

"James Kelman--winner of the Booker Prize for How Late It Was, How Late--possesses an astonishing voice . . . Read a page of Kelman and you can't help but laud his sheer virtuosity."- The Washington Post Book World

Jeremiah Brown, a Scottish immigrant, has lived in the United States for twelve years and moved as many times, all without his luck improving. Now he finds himself in a town south of Rapid City with a nonrefundable ticket to Glasgow--by way of Seattle, Canada, Iceland, and England--to visit his mother. But on his last night in the States, Jeremiah is haunted by memories of the infant daughter he may be leaving behind and by an acute sense of foreboding. Moving from bar to bar, losing count of the beers he has drunk, all the while talking to the strangers he meets, Jeremiah Brown emerges as an unforgettable, darkly comic commentator on modern America.

"Deft and moving . . . very funny."--The New York Times Book Review

"Kelman is a politically minded artist of the first order. His plays, stories and essays all have a critical edge that deepens the work . . . and somehow it's even laugh-out-loud funny . . . You Have to be Careful in the Land of the Free is a beautiful embodiment of moral, social, and political outrage portrayed on the most human level."--Rain Taxi

"[Kelman's] technical ability, his sheer artistry is such that displacement and subversiveness are foregrounded, not merely as political issues, but in an effusion of linguistic and formal inventiveness."--Financial Times

Born in Glasgow, James Kelman is the author of a number of novels and collections of short stories, including Translated Accounts, A Disaffection, and How Late It Was, How Late, which won the Booker Prize. He lives in Glasgow.