Sleepers

by Lorenzo Carcaterra

Overview

"Undeniably powerful, an enormously affecting and intensely human story."
—The Washington Post Book World
"A GUT-WRENCHING PIECE OF WORK. . . Carcaterra's graphic narrative grips like gunfire in a dark alley."
—The Atlanta Journal & Constitution
"In his controversial memoir SLEEPERS, Carcaterra remembers harrowing months in the Wilkinson Home for Boys and the elaborate vengeance he and his friends exacted against the guards. He tells it all in spare, stylish prose . . . [with] relentless momentum and sheer drama. . . . SLEEPERS is a thriller, to be sure, but it is equally a wistful hymn to another age."
—The Washington Post Book World
"A TERRIFYING ACCOUNT OF BRUTALITY AND RETRIBUTION, searing in its emotional truth, peopled with murderers, sadists, and thugs, but biblical in its passion and scope."
—People
"SLEEPERS is so many things: a Dickensian portrait of coming of age in Hell's Kitchen, a terrifying and heartbreaking account of the brutalization of youth, a shocking—and disturbingly satisfying—climax worthy of the finest suspense novel. A brilliant, troubling, important book."
—Jonathan Kellerman
"COMPELLING."
—USA Today

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780345404114
Publisher:	Random House Publishing Group
Publication date:	03/02/1996
Edition description:	REPRINT
Pages:	384
Product dimensions:	4.18(w) x 6.84(h) x 1.03(d)

About the Author

Lorenzo Carcaterra is the author of A Safe Place: The True Story of a Father, a Son, a Murder.  He is married and has two children.

Editorial Reviews

Carcaterra's controversial memoir of growing up in NYC's Hell's Kitchen and as an inmate at a sadistic detention center was a PW bestseller for eight weeks. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

A book with a punch equal to its publicity hype! Journalist Carcaterra tells with gripping force of his days growing up in the tough New York City neighborhood of Hell's Kitchen in the 1960s (the names have been changed to protect the innocent "and" the guilty). He and his three closest buddies engaged in petty crime until the day their tricks got out of hand and escalated into a major offense, for which they were sent to a juvenile home in upstate New York. They were tormented during their months there, not by other young inmates but by their adult guards, who brutalized them relentlessly in a program of horror and torture that included rape. Once out, once grown up, one of the boys became a lawyer, and through a bizarre twist of events worthy of being turned into a movie (in fact, the movie rights have been sold, with Barry Levinson lined up as director), he, Carcaterra, and the other two friends expose the horrible wrongs they suffered in that detention home. Both difficult to read and difficult to put down, this book will garner lots of attention, and as a result, readership demand will be high.

Brad Hooper