num_pages: 208
description: From “one of America’s premier writers of fiction” (New York Times) comes this novel inspired by the 1985 police bombing of a West Philadelphia row house owned by the back-to-nature, Afrocentric cult known as Move. The bombing killed eleven people and started a fire that destroyed sixty other houses. At the center of the story is Cudjoe, a writer and exile who returns to his old neighborhood after spending a decade fleeing from his past, and his search for the lone survivor of the fire — a young boy who was seen running from the flames. An impassioned, brutally honest journey through the despair and horror of life in urban America, "Philadelphia Fire isn't a book you read so much as one you breathe" (San Francsisco Chronicle).
language: English
title: Philadelphia Fire
titlecomplete: Philadelphia Fire
genres: American, Historical Fiction, Historical, Thriller, Novels, African American Literature, Race, African American, The United States Of America, Fiction
ratings_count: 803
awards: awardedAt: 662716800000
name: American Book Award, awardedAt: 662716800000
name: PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction
publisher: Mariner Books