GROVE PRESS
ATLANTIC MONTHLY PRESS
BLACK CAT
THE MYSTERIOUS PRESS
ATLANTIC BOOKS, LTD.
Grove Press is a hardcover and paperback imprint of Grove Atlantic, Inc. Grove Press
was founded on Grove Street in New York’s Greenwich Village in 1947. But its
true beginning came in 1951 when twenty-eight-year-old Barney Rossett, Jr.
bought the company and turned it into one of the most influential publishers of
the 1950s, 60s, and 70s. From the outset, Rossett took chances: Grove published
many of the Beats including William S. Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, and Allen
Ginsberg. In addition, Grove Press became the preeminent publisher of twentieth-century
drama in America, publishing the work of Samuel Beckett (Nobel Prize for
Literature 1969), Bertold Brecht, Eugene Ionesco, David Mamet (Pulitzer Prize
for Drama 1984), Harold Pinter (Nobel Prize for Literature 2005), Tom Stoppard,
and many more. The press also introduced to American audiences the work of
international authors such as Jorge Luis Borges, Mikhail Bulgakov, Marguerite
Duras, Jean Genet, Pablo Neruda, Octavio Paz (Nobel Prize for Literature 1990),
Kenzaburo Oe (Nobel Prize for Literature 1994), Elfriede Jelinek (Nobel Prize for
Literature 2004), Alain Robbe-Grillet, and Juan Rulfo. In the late 1950s and
early 1960s, Barney Rossett challenged the obscenity laws by publishing D. H.
Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover and then Henry Miller’s Tropic of
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landscape. Grove Press went on to publish literary erotic classics like The
Story of O and ground-breaking gay fiction like John Rechy’s City of
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Grove Press published classics that include Franz Fanon’s The Wretched of
the Earth, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, and Che Guevara’s The
Bolivian Diary, among many other titles. In 1986, Barney Rosset sold the
company and the press became part of Grove Weidenfeld. In 1993 that company was
merged with Atlantic Monthly Press to form Grove Atlantic, Inc.
Since 1993, Grove Press has been both a hardcover and paperback imprint of Grove
Atlantic publishing fiction, drama, poetry, literature in translation, and
general nonfiction. Authors and titles include Jon Lee Anderson’s Che
Guevara: A Revolutionary Life, Robert Olen Butler’s A Good Scent from a Strange
Mountain (Pulitzer Prize for Literature 1993), Kiran Desai’s Inheritance
of Loss (Man Booker Prize 2006), Richard Flanagan’s Gould’s Book of Fish
(Commonwealth Prize 2002), Ismail Kadare’s The Siege, Jerzy Kosinski’s Steps
(National Book Award 1969), Jacqueline Susann’s Valley of the Dolls, Nick
McDonell’s Twelve, Catherine Millet’s The Sexual Life of Catherine M.,
Pascal Mercier’s Night Train to Lisbon, Kay Ryan (Poet Laureate of the
United States 2008/9) as well as Antonio Lobo Antunes, Will Self, Barry Hannah,
Terry Southern, and many others.
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Bradford Morrow on Amazon Omnivoracious
“[A] novel about fish the way Moby-Dick is a novel about whales, or Ulysses is a novel about the events of a single day. . . . a wondrous, phantasmagorical meditation on art and history and nature . . . a novel that welds a Joycean love of language to a billowing, Melvillian vision of the world.” —Michiko Kakutani,
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Richard Flanagan's The Narrow Road to the Deep North wins the 2014 Man Booker Prize!
Winner of the 2014 Samuel Johnson Prize for Nonfiction
"A lovely touching book about a young woman grieving over the death of her father becoming rejuvenated by training one of the roughest, most difficult creatures in the heavens, the goshawk." —Jim Harrison
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“Studded with quotations and succinct observations, this remarkable novel by Alameddine is a paean to fiction, poetry, and female friendship. Dip into it, make a reading list from it,
or simply bask in its sharp,
smart prose.”
—Michele Leber, Booklist (starred review)
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“In this shocking exposé, Bowers finally reveals his sexual liaisons with the rich and famous, sparing no details along the way. . . . Bowers has no regrets—having led a life of pleasure, satisfaction and joy that the rest of us can only envy.” —The New York Post
“A shocking tell-all . . . Astonishing.” —People
“Quel scandale!” —Vanity Fair
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“Fobbit is hilarious, but the subject matter is deadly serious.It is the rare writer—indeed, the rare person—who can step outside of himself and see with cold clarity the humor and pathos of his situation and then bring the reader to the same understanding. David Abrams is such a writer.” —Karl Marlantes, author of Matterhorn
Fobbit
By David Abrams
Black Cat
978-0-8021-2032-8 • $15.00 • Paperback • Sep. 2012
Fiction
Fobbit ’fä-b t, noun. Definition: A U.S. soldier stationed at a Forward Operating Base who avoids combat by remaining at the base, esp. during Operation Iraqi Freedom (2003–2011). Pejorative.
“Fobbit is fast, razor sharp, and seven kinds of hilarious. It deserves a place alongside Slaughterhouse-Five and Catch-22 as one of our great comic novels about the absurdity of war.” —Jonathan Evison, author of West of Here
Fobbit is a darkly ironic novel of the Iraq war that marks the debut of a new voice in literary fiction. Based on the author’s own experiences serving in Iraq and the diary he kept there, Fobbit takes us into the chaotic world of Baghdad’s Forward Operating Base Triumph. The Forward Operating Base, or FOB, is like the back-office of the battlefield—where the grunts eat and sleep between missions, and where a lot of Army employees have what looks suspiciously like an office job. The FOB contains all the comforts of home, including Starbucks and Burger King, but there’s also the unfortunate possibility that a mortar might hit you while you’re drinking your Frappucino.
A lot of what goes on at the FOB doesn’t exactly fit the image of war that the army and the government feed us: male and female soldiers are trying to find an empty Porta-Potty in which to get acquainted, grunts are playing Xbox and watching NASCAR between missions, and most of the senior staff are more concerned about getting to the chow hall in time for the Friday night all-you-can-eat seafood special than worrying about little things like military strategy. The book follows dyed-in-the-wool Fobbit Staff Sergeant Chance Gooding, who works for the army public affairs office and spends his days tapping out press releases to try to turn the latest roadside bombing or army blunder into something that the American public can read about while eating their breakfast cereal.
Like Catch-22 and M*A*S*H, Fobbit fuses pathos with dark humor to create a brilliantly witty and profound work about the ugly and banal truth of life in the modern-day war zone.