The Difficult Ghost
Searching for Truman Capote
Leila Guerriero author Megan McDowell translator
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Pushkin Press
Published:28th Aug '25
Should be back in stock very soon
An incisive, stylish exploration of how Truman Capote wrote In Cold Blood and the ethics of storytelling by a star non-fiction writer
'A gem of a book' The Times
In 1960, Truman Capote arrived in the small town of Palamós on the Costa Brava.He'd hoped a short break from New York's social scene would help him finish the book he was writing about two young men convicted of a horrific murder. He wound up staying in Europe for three years of agonising self-exile, wrestling with his haunting material, crafting a masterpiece, and waiting for the event that would allow him to finish it - the execution of those two men.
Following in Capote's footsteps in Palamós, celebrated journalist Leila Guerriero finds almost no trace of those turbulent years. As she sorts through a jumble of competing local accounts and blatant fabrications, she launches a dazzling enquiry into the curious afterlife of writing - and the dark complexities of turning life into literature.
A real gem of a book, offering a brief but valuable contemplation of the curious afterlife of great literature * The Times *
Engaging... Guerriero dissects Capote's ambidextrous morality... a timely reminder that all non-fiction is a fabrication on some level * Financial Times *
Written in Guerriero's trademark dry, cutting and highly expressive style... Magnificent * El Cultural *
Guerriero is one of the masters of the new Latin American journalism. She has invented a new form of writing profiles... The book does not reveal Capote's life, but it does reveal the myth of Capote in Palamós, and in the end the myth is more important than reality * Zenda *
Driven by essential questions about truth, writing and literary non-fiction, that genre of which In Cold Blood remains the absolute model and of which Guerriero is today one of the greatest exponents * Le Monde *
Crystalline and yet mysterious, slender and yet exhaustive, The Difficult Ghost is a marvel of compression and unease -- Rupert Thomson, author of 'Barcelona Dreaming'
ISBN: 9781805333005
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
160 pages