Ceremony - (Penguin Vitae) by Leslie Marmon Silko (Hardcover)

About the Book

"This new edition of the Native American novel about Tayo, a World War II veteran of mixed ancestry, and his struggles when he returns to the Laguna Pueblo Reservation features a new foreword by Tommy Orange. Scarred by his experience as a prisoner of the Japanese and further wounded by the rejection he encounters from his people, he regains peace by immersing himself in the Indian past"--

Book Synopsis

A Penguin Vitae edition of the great Native American Novel of a battered veteran returning home to heal his mind and spirit, with a foreword by bestselling author Tommy Orange

A Penguin Classic Hardcover

More than 45 years after its original publication, Ceremony remains one of the most profound and moving works of Native American literature, a novel that is itself a ceremony of healing. Tayo, a World War II veteran of mixed ancestry, returns to the Laguna Pueblo Reservation. He is deeply scarred by his experience as a prisoner of the Japanese and further wounded by the rejection he encounters from his people. Only by immersing himself in the Indian past can he begin to regain the peace that was taken from him. Masterfully written, filled with the somber majesty of Pueblo myth, Ceremony is a work of enduring power

Review Quotes

Praise for Ceremony

"An exceptional novel--a cause for celebration." --The Washington Post Book World

"Her assurance, her gravity, her flexibility are all wonderful gifts." --The New York Review of Books

"The novel is very deliberately a ceremony in itself--demanding but confident and beautifully written." --The Boston Globe

"Ceremony is the greatest novel in Native American literature. It is one of the greatest novels of any time and place. I have read this book so many times that I probably have it memorized. I teach it and I learn from it and I am continually in awe of its power, beauty, rage, vision, and violence." --Sherman Alexie

"Without question Leslie Marmon Silko is the most accomplished Native American writer of her generation." --The New York Times Book Review

About the Author

Leslie Marmon Silko is the author of ten books of fiction, poetry, and memoir, including Ceremony, Storyteller, Almanac of the Dead, and The Turquoise Ledge. She received a "Genius Grant" from the MacArthur Foundation in 1981 and the Native Writers' Circle of the Americas Lifetime Achievement Award in 1994. The singular achievement of Ceremony, published in 1977, secured her a place among the first rank of Native American novelists. She was recently awarded the 2020 lifetime achievement award from the Academy of Arts and Letters and the 2020 Robert Kirsch Award for lifetime achievement.

Tommy Orange is the author of the New York Times bestselling novel There There, and the forthcoming novel Wandering Stars (2024). Orange graduated from the MFA program at the Institute of American Indian Arts, and was a 2014 MacDowell Fellow and a 2016 Writing by Writers Fellow. He won the 2019 PEN/Hemingway prize and was a 2019 Pulitzer Prize Finalist in Fiction. He is an enrolled member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma. He was born and raised in Oakland, California.