THE SNOW QUEEN

New York City, NY: Farrar Straus & Giroux, 2014. First Edition. First Printing.. Hardcover. Fine/Fine Dust Jacket.. New York City, NY: Farrar Straus & Giroux, 2014. Hardcover. Fine/Fine. First Edition/First Printing. 260 pages. The author's seventh novel. One of Michael Cunningham's finest achievements. The First Hardcover Edition. Precedes and should not be confused with all other subsequent editions. Published in a small and limited first print run as a hardcover original only. The First Edition is now scarce. "Autographed Copy" round green sticker pasted in front. Presents Michael Cunningham's "The Snow Queen". Named after the great Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale about a sister who travels arduous distances to save her brother, who has a shard of mirror glass stuck in his eye. Cunningham retains the sibling-cum-illness motif and transposes the tale to our time, about two brothers and the terminally ill sister they both care for and love dearly. "That voice, Cunningham's inimitable style, is the real miracle of 'The Snow Queen'. Sentence by sentence, he moves across the surface of these pages like some suave, literary god. He writes so wisely about the cruel taunting of remission and the way illness both deepens and frays romantic relationships, endowing the dying with a kind of security and purpose that healthy people crave. Full of affecting pathos" (The Washington Post) . "We want escapism, of course, but there's another, more complicated, kind of escapism that we also want - an escape into a different, possibly larger, more immediately meaningful world. Fairy tales, movies, novels, they all take us out of the confines of ourselves, of our lives, even if we're perfectly happy with our lives. Because there are other lives too" (Michael Cunningham) . An absolute "must-have" title for Michael Cunningham collectors. This copy is very prominently and beautifully signed and dated (on the day of publication) in black ink-pen on the title page by the author: "Michael Cunningham May 6, 2014". It is signed directly on the page itself, not on a tipped-in page. Cunningham launched the book in New York City. Laid-in is the bookmark of the store in which the launch was held and during which his signature was obtained. This also comes with a fine copy of the Printers Row Journal May 2014 Issue, which shows Cunningham on the Cover and features a four-page Interview/Article, "Weaving A Fairy Tale From Life", on "The Snow Queen". This title is a contemporary classic. As far as we know, this is the only such signed and publication-day dated copy of the First Hardcover Edition/First Printing available online and is in especially fine condition: Clean, crisp, and bright. Please note: Copies available online have serious flaws, are subsequent printings, or are remainder-marked. This is surely an accessible and lovely alternative. A rare signed copy thus. "A Home At The End of The World" was selected as one of "The 200 Best Novels in English Since 1950" by The Modern Library, the most prestigious list of its kind for the period 1950-1999. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Literature and The Pen/Faulkner Award in 1999 for "The Hours". One of the finest American writers of our time. A fine copy. (SEE ALSO OTHER MICHAEL CUNNINGHAM TITLES IN OUR CATALOG). ISBN 0374266328.