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Phantom Pain book cover
Phantom Pain
2000
First Published
3.31
Average Rating
288
Number of Pages
A one-time literary novelist of some respectability, now brought low by the double insult of obscurity and crippling debt, Robert G. Mehlman is a man in need of money and recognition, fast. But Mehlman's publisher is only interested in his long overdue novel, since the people don't want short stories, and his portfolio was liquidated months ago. So, it is to culinary writing that he turns. A practiced decadent, a habitual spendthrift, and a serial womanizer, he has, ostensibly, all the right qualities. But the path to fame is never a smooth one. Phantom Pain is the bitterly funny but unpublished manuscript of Mehlman's autobiography. In it, he tells the parallel stories of his decaying marriage and his puzzling affair with a woman he meets by chance and who accompanies him on the road. York City to Atlantic City where they gamble away most of Mehlman's remaining funds and then North, to Albany, where he finds unlikely salvation and the inspiration for his book, Polish-Jewish Cuisine in 69 Recipes. Framed by Mehlman's son's account of his famous father, this novel-within-a-novel is a darkly hilarious tale of a writer's fall and his subsequent rise. Phantom Pain has all the characteristic mixture of slapstick and stark despair that has made Arnon Grunberg one of the most interesting, certainly the funniest, and arguably the best Dutch writer working today.
Avg Rating
3.31
Number of Ratings
1,385
5 STARS
9%
4 STARS
34%
3 STARS
40%
2 STARS
14%
1 STARS
3%
goodreads

Author

Arnon Grunberg
Arnon Grunberg
Author · 11 books

Arnon Yasha Yves (Arnon) Grunberg is a Dutch writer. Some of his books were written using the heteronym Marek van der Jagt. In 1989 Grunberg made his acting debut in Maria's Cunt (de Kut van Maria); a short film by Dutch enfant terrible filmmaker Cyrus Frisch. Grunberg made his literary debut in 1994 with the novel Blauwe maandagen (Blue Mondays), which won the Dutch prize for the best debut novel that year. In 2000, under the heteronym Marek van der Jagt, he won the best debut prize again for his novel De geschiedenis van mijn kaalheid (The History of My Baldness). Grunberg publishes novels about once a year but also writes columns and essays in a wide variety of Dutch and international newspapers and magazines. He does not restrict himself only to the written media, but also reads a story for the radio every week and for some time he was host of a cultural television program. He also writes a blog for the literary Internet magazine Words Without Borders and his own site ArnonGrunberg.com. His novel Tirza won the Dutch Golden Owl Prize for Literature and the Libris Prize.[1] His books have been translated into many languages, including English, German, Japanese and Georgian. From 2006 Grunberg wrote various journalistic reports, for example about working undercover in a Bavarian hotel and his visit to Guantánamo Bay. Also he visited the Dutch troops in Afghanistan and the US Army in Iraq. In 2009 these reports were collected in the book Chambermaids and Soldiers.

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