具体描述
In 1922 a suitcase containing almost everything that
the young Ernest Heminsway, had written up to that
time was stolen in a train station in Paris. No trace of
this suitcase or its contents has ever been discovered,
despite the fact that the unpublished stories it con-
tained would be immensely valuable.
In present-day Los Angeles, a wealthy dilettante
named Nils-Frederik Glas returns From Europe and
produces some stories that bear a striking resem-
blance to Hemingway s early work. So begins l 4ac-
Donald Harris s ingenious and provocative new novel,
Hemingway s Suitcase. Nils-Frederik refuses to say
where the stories come from, but he announces his
intention to publish them to his son, Alan, a strug-
gling literary agent. As Alan reads the manuscripts
one by one, he realizes that if they are genuine
Hemingway stories, Nils-Frederik has made the liter-
ary discovery of the century. If they are not, he is a
clever forger and the perpetrator of a possibly criminal
fraud.
When Alan reluctantly agrees to help his father
prepare the book for publication, he finds himself
entangled in a web of intrigue and mystery, where the
distinction between genuine and fraudulent is oddly
blurred. It is a web spun by the cunning and duplici-
tous Nils-Frederik, made even more sinister by the
sexual fantasies played out by his mistress, Charmian,
and the bizarre private visions of Nana, his blind and
aged mother. Alan s wife, Lily, looks for her truth in
the stars, and even their nine-year-old daughter,
Kilda, is adept at creating her own realities. Every-
where--in his convoluted relations with his father,
in his curious attempts to create facsimiles of the
"Hemingway" manuscripts, in his encounters with
less-than-ethical academics, opportunistic publish-
ers, and the ominous private sleuth Klipspringer--
Alan is confronted by the question: What is false, what
is real?
Five of the disputed Suitcase stories, all having as
their hero the Nick Adams ofHemingway s early
fiction, are included in this witty, cieverly plotted, and
compellingty readable novel. Are they the work of
Hemingway or not? Let the reader decide--.-as all the
characters in Alan s world must finally come to terms
