About The Book

Robert Coover has been hailed as one of the most accomplished and versatile writers of our time. His fourteen titles to date have established him as a powerhouse among America’s postmodernist writers, and he is the recipient of numerous honors, including the William Faulkner Award, the Brandeis Citation for Fiction, the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award, and the Rea Award for the Short Story. With Briar Rose, Coover casts his own unmistakable style on a classic tale.

Briar Rose, a brilliant recreation of the timeless Sleeping Beauty story, tells of a prince trapped in the briars; a sleeping beauty who cannot awaken, dreaming of a succession of kissing princes; and the old spell-casting fairy who inhabits the princess’s dreams, regaling her with legends of other sleeping beauties and trying to imagine the nature of human desire.

Praise

“Brilliant . . . surely one of the most perfectly executed literary gems ever.” –Los Angeles Times

“Like the story it’s based on, Briar Rose is a classic by a contemporary master.” –The Review of Contemporary Fiction

“A rich and intricate set of variations on the old fairy tale . . . Though Briar Rose can make one laugh aloud, there’s finally something grave and beautiful about Mr. Coover’s playful fusion of sex and storytelling, the way he makes it both never and always the same.” –The New York Times Book Review

“Coover’s allegorical retelling of Sleeping Beauty–hard to put down and impossible to paraphrase–is one of his best, bitterest jokes to date . . . confirming him as simply wittier, sadder, more precise and more inventive than most novelists writing today.” –Publishers Weekly

Awards

A New York Times Notable Book of the Year