Novel
Deliverance
James Dickey · 1970
Synopsis
Four city dwellers from a large Georgia city canoe down a river, the Cahulawassee, which a dam is soon to drown. The man who organised the trip, Lewis, is an archer and wants to see the river before it disappears; the other three do not know it. The narrator, Ed Gentry, is an art director at a commercial graphics agency in which he is a partner, and shoots with a bow alongside Lewis. The first day goes well. On the second, the river and those who live on its banks put these men from the city to the test.
Context
Its author was forty-seven and was scarcely known except as a poet when he published this first novel. He wrote the adaptation himself for John Boorman in 1972; removed along the way after a quarrel, he returned to play the sheriff. The banjo piece played at the start of the film, an arrangement by Eric Weissberg and Steve Mandell of a tune by Arthur Smith, rose to second place in American record sales. He went on to write two other novels, in 1987 and 1993.
Who it is for
A novel of about three hundred pages, with sustained tension. The film made from it two years later is often better known than the book. Translated by Jacques Mailhos in 2013.
Prizes and reception
A best-seller from the moment it was published, winner of the Prix Médicis étranger in 1971, and the first of the three novels by an author regarded as a poet.
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