the bridge of san luis rey by thornton wilder

Ultimately, his search leads to a timeless investigation into the nature of fate and love, and the meaning of the human condition. Deeply moved, he embarks on a quest to prove that it was divine intervention, not chance, that led to the deaths of the five people crossing the bridge that day. 'On Friday noon, July the twentieth, 1714, the finest bridge in all Peru broke and precipitated five travelers into the gulf below.' This immortal sentence opens The Bridge of San Luis Rey, one of the towering achievements in American literature, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, and a novel still read throughout the world.īrother Juniper, a Franciscan monk, witnesses the tragic event. THORNTON WILDER THE Bridge OF San Luis Rey ILLUSTRATED BY AMY DREVENSTEDT Grosset & Dunlap PUBLISHERS BY ARRANGEMENT WITH ALBERT AND CHARLES BONI COPYRIGHT, 1927, BY ALBERT & CHARLES BONI, inc. The crash is witnessed by a monk, brother Jupiter, who in his own fear in the proximity of. Wilder's The Bridge of San Luis Rey is of this kind.' -The Independent (London) The story follows the lives of five victims of the bridge collapse. 'There are books that haunt you down the years, books that seem to touch and stir something deep inside you. 'As close to perfect a moral fable as we are ever likely to get in American literature.' -Russell Banks The definitive edition of Thornton Wilder's Pulitzer Prize-winning classic with a foreword by acclaimed author Russell Banks and an afterword by Wilder's nephew, Tappan Wilder, with illuminating documentary material about the novel and its rich literary history.

The bridge of san luis rey by thornton wilder