The Last of Her Kind

(Paperback)

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The paths of two women from different walks of life intersect amid counterculture of the 1960s in this haunting and provocative novel from the National Book Award-winning author of THE FRIEND

It is Columbia University, 1968. Ann Drayton and Georgette George meet as roommates on the first night. Ann is rich and radical; Georgette is leery and introverted, a child of the very poverty and strife her new friend finds so noble. The two are drawn together by their differences; two years later, after a violent fight, they part ways. When, in 1976, Ann is convicted of killing a New York cop, Georgette comes back to their shared history in search of an explanation. She finds a riddle of a life, shaped by influences more sinister and complex than any of the writ-large sixties movements. She realises, too, how much their early encounter has determined her own path and why, after all this time, as she tells us, 'I have never stopped thinking about her'.

'A brilliant, dazzling, daring novel' Boston Globe

'A subtle and profoundly moving novel about friendship, romantic idealism and shame' O, The Oprah Magazine

'An unflinching examination of justice, race and political idealism that brings to mind Philip Roth's AMERICAN PASTORAL and the tenacious intelligence of Nadine Gordimer' New York Times

Reviews

A brilliant, dazzling, daring novel - Boston Globe

A passionate honesty grips the heart of The Last of Her Kind ... A subtle and profoundly moving novel about friendship, romantic idealism and shame - O, The Oprah Magazine

An unflinching examination of justice, race and political idealism that brings to mind Philip Roth's American Pastoral and the tenacious intelligence of Nadine Gordimer

- New York Times

Nunez ably and effectively evokes the political and social atmosphere of the times . . . Nunez takes a jeweller's eyepiece to racial and sexual politics, to the lasting impact of male violence and to the painful fragility of family bonds . . . an enormously absorbing novel with real heart to it, and a vivid recreation of a seismic and lastingly influential time - Observer

A remarkable and disconcerting vision of a troubled time in American history - The New Yorker

Author Bio

Sigrid Nunez has published seven novels, including A Feather on the Breath of God, The Last of Her Kind, Salvation City, and, most recently, The Friend, which won the National Book Award 2018. She is also the author of Sempre Susan: A Memoir of Susan Sontag. Among the journals to which she has contributed are The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Paris Review, Threepenny Review, Harper's, McSweeney's, Tin House, The Believer and newyorker.com. Her work has also appeared in several anthologies, including four Pushcart Prize volumes and four anthologies of Asian-American literature.

Sigrid's honors and awards include a Whiting Writer's Award, a Berlin Prize Fellowship, and two awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters: the Rosenthal Foundation Award and the Rome Prize in Literature. The Friend won the 2018 National Book Award. She has taught at Columbia, Princeton, Boston University, and the New School, and has been a visiting writer or writer in residence at Amherst, Smith, Baruch, Vassar, and the University of California, Irvine, among others. In spring, 2019, she will be visiting writer at Syracuse University. Sigrid has also been on the faculty of the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference and of several other writers' conferences across the country. She lives in New York City.