In the space of one year,1871, with a handful of startling poems, Arthur Rimbaud transformed himself from a teenaged bumpkin into the literary sensation of Paris. He was taken in, then taken up, by the older, married poet Paul Verlaine in a passionate affair. When Rimbaud sought to end it, Verlaine, in a jealous rage, shot him. Shortly thereafter, just shy of his twentieth birthday, Rimbaud declared himself finished with literature. His resignation notice was his immortal prose poem 'A Season in Hell'. In time, Rimbaud became a prosperous trader and arms dealer in Ethiopia. But a cancerous leg forced him to return to France, to the family farm, with his sister and loving but overbearing mother. He died aged thirty-seven.Bruce Duffy takes the bare facts of Rimbaud's fascinating existence and brings them vividly to life in a story rich with people, places, and paradox. He conveys, as few ever have, the inner turmoil of this calculating genius of outrage, whose work and untidy life did much to anticipate the twentieth century's culture of rebellion.ReviewPraise forThe World As I Found It“Bruce Duffy's novel . . . was one of the more astonishing literary debuts in recent memory. In defiance of common practice, Mr. Duffy gave the world not a tender, autobiographical coming-of-age story or a slim collection of finely wrought tales of family dysfunction but more than 500 pages of dazzling language and dizzying speculation on the life of Ludwig Wittgenstein.” —A.O. Scott,New York Times“Duffy has sustained a miracle. A rich, eloquent, poised masterwork that succeeds beyond one’s most generous expectations.” —Philadelphia Inquirer“By turns wicked, melancholy, and rhapsodic,The World As I Found Itis an astonishing performance, a kind of intellectual opera in which each abstraction gets its own artist.” —John Leonard,Newsday“It is hard to know which is the more outsized—the talent of Bruce Duffy or his nerve. Duffy is a superb writer.” —*Los Angeles Times*“Abundant with life and almost unflaggingly interesting . . . The enigmatic Wittgenstein could imagine the unimaginable, but never would he have imagined it possible that he would one day appear as the protagonist of a novel and a delightful one, at that.” —*Publishers Weekly**From the Hardcover edition.*ReviewPraise for "Disaster Was My God" "There are many lovely touches in Duffy's novel. ... [He] persuasively penetrates the layers of myth and produces characters who suggest the real people they once were. By far the most impressive--and, in its way, the most moving--of these characterizations is that of Rimbaud's mother, who here emerges not as the familiar harpy of many biographies but as a figure of almost tragic stature, a woman as tormented as she was tormenting."--Daniel Mendelsohn, "The New Yorker"
"Mr. Duffy's take on the Rimbaud mystery shapes a novel that...pleases. [His] hyperbolic prose style...grows on you. ... "Disaster Was My God" delivers a Rimbaud who forces literary true believers to ponder an unwelcome thought: that artistic ambition may sometimes be, as the guidance counselors say, just a phase that troubled teens--even geniuses--go through."--Carlin Romano, "New York Times" "Derangement of the senses is what Bruce Duffy has achieved in his