Ray
“A shorthand epic of extraordinary power . . . A novel of brilliant particulars and dizzying juxtapositions” from the acclaimed southern author of Geronimo Rex (Newsweek).
Nominated for the American Book Award, Ray is the bizarre, hilarious, and consistently adventurous story of a life on the edge. Dr. Ray—a womanizer, small-town drunk, vigilante, poet, adoring husband—is a man trying to make sense of life in the twentieth century. In flight from the death he dealt flying over Vietnam, Dr. Ray struggles with those bound to him by need, sickness, lunacy, by blood and by love.
“This novel hangs in the memory like a fishhook. It will haunt you long after you have finally put it down. Barry Hannah is a talent to reckon with, and I can only hope that Ray finds an audience it deserves.” —Harry Crews, The Washington Post Book World
Barry Hannah
Barry Hannah (1942–2010) was the author of twelve books: Geronimo Rex, Airships, Ray, The Tennis Handsome, Nightwatchmen, Captain Maximus, Hey Jack!, Boomerang, Never Die, Bats Out of Hell, High Lonesome, and Yonder Stands Your Orphan. His work was published in The New Yorker, Esquire, Harper’s Magazine, The Southern Review, The Oxford American, Gulf Coast Review, and many other magazines. His achievements in fiction have been honored with an Academy Award in Literature by the American Academy of Arts & Letters, and he was nominated for the American Book Award for Ray and the National Book Award for Geronimo Rex, which won the William Faulkner Prize. He has also received the Arnold Gingrich Short Fiction Award for Airships, and his body of work has been recognized with the PEN/Malamud Award for Short Fiction. Hannah was director of the MFA program at the University of Mississippi in Oxford for three decades, and also taught at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, the Sewanee and Bennington summer writing seminars, and held teaching appointments at many other colleges and universities.
