Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2011.

Told in deWitt's darkly comic and arresting style, THE SISTERS BROTHERS is the kind of Western the Coen Brothers might write - stark, unsettling and with a keen eye for the perversity of human motivation. Like his debut novel ABLUTIONS, THE SISTERS BROTHERS is a novel about the things you tell yourself in order to be able to continue to live the life you find yourself in, and what happens when those stories no longer work. It is an inventive and strange and beautifully controlled piece of fiction, which shows an exciting expansion of Dewitt's range.

Synopsis

Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2011. Oregon, 1851. Eli and Charlie Sisters, notorious professional killers, are on their way to California to kill a man named Hermann Kermit Warm. On the way, the brothers have a series of unsettling and violent experiences in the Darwinian landscape of Gold Rush America. Charlie makes money and kills anyone who stands in his way; Eli doubts his vocation and falls in love. And they bicker a lot. Then they get to California, and discover that Warm is an inventor who has come up with a magical formula, which could make all of them very rich. What happens next is utterly gripping, strange and sad.

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About the Author

Patrick deWitt's writing has appeared in several US magazines and anthologies. His first novel, Ablutions, was published by Granta Books in 2009. He had previously published a short book of random writings and bad advice, Help Yourself Help Yourself. He has worked as a labourer, a clerk, a dishwasher and a bartender. His second novel, The Sisters Brothers won the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize, the Govenor General Literary Award and was shortlisted for the 2011 Man Booker Prize. He lives with his wife and son in Portland, Oregon.   Author photo © Danny Palmerlee More books by this author Author 'Like for Like' recommendation