num_pages: 240
description: Award-winning author Jennifer Egan brilliantly conjures a world from which escape is impossible and where the keep-–the tower, the last stand-–is both everything worth protecting and the very thing that must be surrendered in order to survive. Two cousins, irreversibly damaged by a childhood prank, reunite twenty years later to renovate a medieval castle in Eastern Europe. In an environment of extreme paranoia, cut off from the outside world, the men reenact the signal event of their youth, with even more catastrophic results. And as the full horror of their predicament unfolds, a prisoner, in jail for an unnamed crime, recounts an unforgettable story that seamlessly brings the crimes of the past and present into piercing relation.
language: English
title: The Keep
titlecomplete: The Keep
characters: Howie, Danny, Ann, Benjy
genres: Thriller, Literary Fiction, Gothic, Horror, Suspense, Fantasy, Mystery, Fiction, Novels, Contemporary
ratings_count: 16029
awards: awardedAt: 1199174400000
name: Orange Prize
category: Fiction Longlist
publisher: Knopf