Norwood - Couverture souple

Norwood is the long-unavailable and brilliantly inimitable first novel by Portis. Out of the American neon desert of Roller Dromes, chilli parlours, country music, and girls who want 'to live in a trailer and play records all night' comes ex-marine and troubadour Norwood Pratt. Sent on a mission to New York he gets involved in a wild journey that takes him in and out of stolen cars, freight trains, and buses. By the time he returns home to Texas, Norwood has met his true love, Rita Lee, on a bus; befriended the second shortest midget in show business and 'the world's smallest perfect fat man' and helped Joann 'the chicken with a college education' realise her true potential in life. As with all Portis' fiction, the tone is cool, sympathetic, and funny.

Charles Portis lives in Arkansas, where he was born and educated. He served in the Marine Corps during the Korean War. He was the London bureau chief of the New York Herald-Tribune, for which he was also a reporter. His first novel, Norwood, was published in 1966. His other novels are True Grit, The Dog of the South, and Masters of Atlantis.