The Stone World

A Washington Post Best Fiction Book of 2022

From the son of acclaimed author James Agee, a haunting novel depicting an American boy's childhood in Mexico, ensconced in a world comprised of communist European exiles, local union activists, street children, and avant-garde artists like Frida Kahlo.

Joel Agee's hallucinatory first novel begins in a house with a large garden in an unnamed Mexican town in the late 1940s, where six-and-a-half-year-old Peter reads, dreams, and plays with his friends. He is a nascent explorer, artist, philosopher, mystic, and scientist. His world is still new, not yet papered over with received knowledge.

And the actual world around him is a unique one in history: a community of leftist emigrés who have found refuge in Mexico from the Nazi and fascist regimes of Europe, rubbing shoulders with Mexican labor activists and leftists such as Frida Kahlo.

But the emigrés long for home -- including Peter's step-father, who wants to return to his native Germany. Going back to Europe may not be safe for any of them yet, however, which gives rise to anguished arguments among Peter's parents's and their tight group of friends.

And slowly, Peter begins to comprehend that his world may be turned upside down - that he might be forced to take leave of everyone he knows: his best friend, Arón; his father's friend Sándor, who talks about revolution and performs magic tricks; and Zita, the family's live-in-maid, who has taught him the consoling mysteries of prayer . . .

Steeped in the magic and myths of childhood -- yet haunted by a harsh adult world bedeviled by instability and political turmoil -- Joel Agee's The Stone World is an unforgettable portrait of a family that will inevitably invite comparison with another classic family story, that of his father James Agee's A Death in the Family.

Author: Joel Agee
Publisher: Melville House Publishing
Published: 02/22/2022
Pages: 240
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 0.90lbs
Size: 9.20h x 6.30w x 1.10d
ISBN: 9781612199542


Review Citation(s):
Kirkus Reviews 01/01/2022
Publishers Weekly 01/10/2022
Booklist 01/01/2022 pg. 37
Shelf Awareness 02/25/2022

About the Author
Joel Agee is a writer and translator. He has been awarded a Gugenheim fellowship and numerous prizes for his translation work, including the Berlin Prize of the American Academy in Berlin in 2008; the Helen and Kurt Wolff Prize for his translation of Heinrich von Kleist's verse play Penthesilea; and the ALTA National Translation Award for his translation of Selected Writings of Friedrich Dürrenmatt. He is the author of two memoirs--Twelve Years: An American Boyhood in East Germany and, more recently, In the House of My Fear. His translation of Prometheus Bound was produced at the Getty Villa in 2013. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.