The Hunger of the Wolf - by Stephen Marche (Paperback)

About the Book

"A breakout book from Stephen Marche, The Hunger of the Wolf is a novel about the way we live now: a sweeping, genre-busting tale of money, morality, and the American Dream and the men and monsters who profit in its pursuit set in New York, London, and the Canadian wilderness. Hunters found his body naked in the snow. So begins this breakout book from Stephen Marche, the provocative Esquire columnist and regular contributor to The Atlantic, whose last work of fiction was described by the New York Times Book Review as "maybe the most exciting mash-up of literary genres since David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas." The body in the snow is that of Ben Wylie, the heir to America's second-wealthiest business dynasty, and it is found in a remote patch of northern Canada. Far away, in post-crash New York, Jamie Cabot, the son of the Wylie family's housekeepers, must figure out how and why Ben died. He knows the answer lies in the tortured history of the Wylie family, who over three generations built up their massive holdings into several billion dollars' worth of real estate, oil, and information systems despite a terrible family secret they must keep from the world. The threads of the Wylie men's destinies, both financial and supernatural, lead twistingly but inevitably to the naked body in the snow and a final, chilling revelation. The Hunger of the Wolf is a novel about what it means to be a man in the world of money. It is a story of fathers and sons, about secrets that are kept within families, and about the cost of the tension between the public face and the private soul. Spanning from the mills of Depression era Pittsburgh to the Swinging London of the 1960s, from desolate Alberta to the factories of present-day China, it is a bold and breathtakingly ambitious work of fiction that uses the story of a single family to capture the way we live now"--

Book Synopsis

A "spellbinding" (Publishers Weekly) literary novel with fangs: a sweeping, genre-busting tale of money, morality, and the American Dream--and the men and monsters who profit in its pursuit--set in New York, London, and the Canadian wilderness.

Hunters found his body naked in the snow. The body is that of Ben Wylie, the second-richest man in America, and it is found in a remote patch of northern Canada. Far away, in New York, the son of the Wylie family's housekeepers tries to figure out how and why Ben died. The answer lies in the tortured history of the Wylie family, who built up their massive fortune over three generations. All of the Wylie men struggle with a secret: they are werewolves. The threads of their destinies, both financial and supernatural, lead twistingly but inevitably to the naked body in the snow and a final, terrible revelation.

The Hunger of the Wolf is a novel about what it means to be a man in a world of money. It's about the pursuit of wealth through the rising tide of America in the twentieth century, seen through the sober lens of more recent economic times. It's a novel about the innate nature of violence: The Wylie men struggle to control their inner rage, through physical restraint, psychotherapy, drugs, hedonistic abandon, and good old-fashioned denial. It's a story of fathers and sons, about secrets that are kept in families, and about the cost of the tension between the public face and the private soul--the cruelty and loneliness and occasional joy of being a magical being in a quotidian world.

A brilliant mystery from page one, "The Hunger of the Wolf is simply one of the most observant and entertaining examinations of modern will-to-wealth that fiction has produced in recent years" (Miami Herald).

Review Quotes

"A dazzling virtuoso piece. Marche turns the making of a family's fortune into a fascinating, bloody fairy tale." --Emma Donoghue, author of Room and Frog Music

"Brilliant . . . Marche has created a stunning, evocative, and impressionistic account of the ascent of wealth in the twentieth century. . . . The Hunger of the Wolf could be Marche's breakthrough novel." --Booklist, starred review

"I read this book in basically a single sitting yesterday and have thought of little else since. It's the kind of novel that makes me want to turn the last page and immediately turn it over and start reading it again. The Hunger of the Wolf is a modern masterpiece: The Great Gatsby for the new Gilded Age." --James Frey

"Spellbinding . . . No word is out of place in this taut multigenerational tale." --Publishers Weekly

"Superb . . . Part realist portrait of upper-crust lives, part lycanthropic fairy tale . . . An entertaining, curious journey into the beating black hearts that occupy the penthouse suites and those who aspire to join them." --Kirkus Reviews

About the Author

Stephen Marche is a novelist and culture writer who has written for The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, Esquire, and many other outlets. His books include three novels, The Hunger of the Wolf, Raymond and Hannah, and Shining at the Bottom of the Sea, as well as The Unmade Bed and How Shakespeare Changed Everything. He lives in Toronto with his wife and children.