Overview

A spare and haunting novel that won the Pulitzer Prize and has informed how literature addressed tragedy ever since its initial publication in 1927 In eighteenth-century Peru, a rope bridge collapses, dropping five people to tragic deaths in the gorge below. In the aftermath, Brother Juniper, a Franciscan friar and a witness to the disaster, strives to comprehend why these five people were fated to die in this way. Was it, he wonders, some form of divine Providence, or was it arbitrary and unrelated to the manner in which these people had led their lives? In its exploration of love and loss, cosmic justice and injustice, and fate versus chance, The Bridge of San Luis Rey probes at questions that remain--that will always remain--fundamental to human existence.

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"""[The Bridge of San Luis Rey] leaves a vivid impression of society in the golden age of the most aristocratic capital of Latin America. The histories of the five people are told perfectly with sympathy and insight."" -- ""New Statesman"" ""A masterpiece."" -- ""New York Herald Tribune"" ""A remarkably confident evocation of the secret springs of half a dozen men, women and children."" -- ""The Nation"" ""One of the greatest reading novels in this century's American writing...Wonderfully lucid reading."" -- ""Edmund Fuller, American historian and literary critic"" ""The essence of Mr. Wilder's book is really the feeling in it; it is a 'notation of the heart' with sympathy. Gaily or sadly, but always with understanding, a belief in the miracle of love runs through it all."" -- ""Times Literary Supplement (London)"""

""[The Bridge of San Luis Rey] leaves a vivid impression of society in the golden age of the most aristocratic capital of Latin America. The histories of the five people are told perfectly with sympathy and insight."" -- ""New Statesman"" ""A masterpiece."" -- ""New York Herald Tribune"" ""A remarkably confident evocation of the secret springs of half a dozen men, women and children."" -- ""The Nation"" ""One of the greatest reading novels in this century's American writing...Wonderfully lucid reading."" -- ""Edmund Fuller, American historian and literary critic"" ""The essence of Mr. Wilder's book is really the feeling in it; it is a 'notation of the heart' with sympathy. Gaily or sadly, but always with understanding, a belief in the miracle of love runs through it all."" -- ""Times Literary Supplement (London)""

Author Information

Thornton Wilder (1897-1975) was an accomplished novelist and playwright whose works, exploring the connection between the commonplace and cosmic dimensions of human experience, continue to be read and produced around the world. His novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey won the Pulitzer Prize in 1928, as did two of his four full-length dramas: Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth. Wilder's The Matchmaker was adapted as the musical Hello, Dolly!. He also enjoyed enormous success with many other forms of the written and spoken word, among them teaching, acting, the opera, and cinema. His screenplay for Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt remains a classic psycho-thriller to this day. Wilder's many honors include the Gold Medal for Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the National Book Committee's Medal for Literature. Timothy Andrés Pabon is an English- and Spanish-speaking voice-over artist who has had acting roles on House of Cards and has also been a costar on HBO's acclaimed series The Wire. As a stage actor, he has worked off-Broadway at the June Havoc Theatre, and his regional credits include Center Stage, the Shakespeare Theatre, Arena Stage, the Hippodrome, Olney Theatre, Rep Stage, and GALA Hispanic Theatre.

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