num_pages: 291
description: The first novel from William Kennedy in more than five years and universally acclaimed as his most powerful work since the Pulitzer Prize-winning Ironweed, Roscoe shows Kennedy at his very best. It's V-J Day, the war is over, and Roscoe Conway, after twenty-six years as the second in command of Albany's notorious political machine, decides to quit politics forever. But there's no way out, and only his Machiavellian imagination can help him cope with the erupting disasters. Every step leads back to the past-to the early loss of his true love, the takeover of city hall, the machine's fight with FDR and Al Smith to elect a governor, and the methodical assassination of gangster Jack "Legs" Diamond. "Thick with crime, passion, and backroom banter" (The New Yorker), Roscoe is an odyssey of great scope and linguistic verve, a deadly, comic masterpiece from one of America's most important writers.
language: English
title: Roscoe
titlecomplete: Roscoe
genres: Fiction, Politics, American Fiction, Literature, Classics, Novels, Historical Fiction, United States
ratings_count: 480
series: The Albany Cycle
awards: awardedAt: 1041408000000
name: PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, awardedAt: 1009872000000
name: National Book Critics Circle Award
category: Fiction
publisher: Penguin Books