The Very Rich Hours of Count Von Stauffenberg

Book excerpt: Called one of the most original talents in American fiction by The New York Times Book Review, Paul West is a continuously surprising and satisfying writer, whose oeuvre stands as one of the most important in American literature in recent decades. With these reissues, Overlook and Tusk continue its program of publishing the brilliantly lyrical fiction of Paul West.In The Universe, and Other Fictions, Paul West embraces galaxies and molecular events, creating singular fiction as combustible and astonishing as Creation itself. In The Very Rich Hours of Count von Stauffenberg, West weaves a brilliant tapestry of fact and imagination about the ill-fated attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler. In the dark literary thriller, The Women of Whitechapel and Jack the Ripper, West brilliantly recasts the Jack the Ripper story, drawing on up-to-date research and his own dazzling imagination to plumb the lower depths of Victorian England.