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Winter in the Blood

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About this listen

 A contemporary classic from a major writer of the Native American renaissance — "Brilliant, brutal and, in my opinion, Welch's best work." —Tommy Orange, The Washington Post

One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years

During his life, James Welch came to be regarded as a master of American prose, and his first novel, Winter in the Blood, is one of his most enduring works. The narrator of this beautiful, often disquieting novel is a young Native American man living on the Fort Belknap Reservation in Montana. Sensitive and self-destructive, he searches for something that will bind him to the lands of his ancestors but is haunted by personal tragedy, the dissolution of his once proud heritage, and Montana's vast emptiness. Winter in the Blood is an evocative and unforgettable work of literature that will continue to move and inspire anyone who encounters it.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators. Genre Fiction Historical Fiction Literary Fiction World Literature Classics Fiction Native American Native American Historical Fiction

Critic reviews

"A nearly flawless novel about human life . . . Few books in any year speak so unanswerably, make their own local terms so thoroughly ours."
-Reynolds Price, The New York Times Book Review

"For some readers this will be the most significant piece of Indian writing they have yet encountered; for others it will simply be a brilliant novel."
-The New Republic

"An unnervingly beautiful book."
-Roger Sale, The New York Review of Books
All stars
Most relevant
A fantastic read and partially surreal journey through a young man’s life and memories. This book deserves every award it has ever received.

Pure poetry

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There wasn't a word in this that I thought might have been replaced by a better word. It was beautifully observed life in the raw.

Tender Poetry

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