num_pages: 352
description: Martin Dressler is the son of a cigar maker, born in late 19th-century New York. As Martin approaches manhood, it is rapidly clear that his ambitions stretch far further than inheriting his father's shop, as he moves first to take a job in a hotel, then to open a restaurant, and rapidly ascends to become a builder of hotels of his own. He is a classic entrepreneur, a young man who has the audacity to make his dreams - and the American Dream - come true on the grandest possible scale. But when Martin sets out to build the Grand Cosmos, a hotel that rivals Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast in its scale, and aims to rival the world itself in its scope, this mesmerizing novel finally exposes the ambiguity of the American dream and the perils and wonder of human ambition and human imagination.
language: English
title: Martin Dressler the Tale of an American
titlecomplete: Martin Dressler the Tale of an American
genres: American, Classics, New York, Historical, Fantasy, Novels, Historical Fiction, Literature, Literary Fiction, Fiction
ratings_count: 10023
awards: awardedAt: 852105600000
name: Pulitzer Prize
category: Fiction, awardedAt: 820483200000
name: National Book Award Finalist
category: Fiction
publisher: Phoenix (an Imprint of The Orion Publishing Group Ltd )