Whores for Gloria

A “beautifully written and deeply affecting” novel (USA Today) about a Vietnam veteran – from the National Book Award-winning author of Europe Central

From the acclaimed author of
Europe Central comes this fever dream of a novel about an alcoholic Vietnam veteran, Jimmy, who devotes his government check and his waking hours to the search for a beautiful and majestic sex worker, a woman who may or may not exist save in Jimmy's rambling dreams. Gloria's image seems distilled from memory and fantasy and the fragments of whatever Jimmy can buy from the other sex workers: their sex, their stories—all the unavailing dreams of love and salvation among the drinkers and addicts who haunt San Francisco's Tenderloin District.

William T. Vollmann is the author of ten novels, including
Europe Central, which won the National Book Award.  He has also written four collections of stories, including
The
Atlas, which won the PEN Center USA West Award for Fiction, a memoir, and six works of nonfiction, including
Rising Up and Rising Down and
Imperial, both of which were finalists for the National Book Critics Circle Award. He is the recipient of a Whiting Writers Award and the Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.  His journalism and fiction have been published in
The New Yorker,
Harpers,
Esquire,
Granta, and many other publications.