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The Power of the Dog

The Power of the Dog

  • **NOW THE WINNER OF THE 2022 BEST DIRECTOR OSCAR AND TWO 2022 BAFTA AWARDS**

  • Thomas Savage

  • Annie Proulx (Afterword by)

  • Chad Michael Collins (Read by)

  • Annie Proulx (Read by)

Brought to you by Penguin.

NOW THE WINNER OF THE 2022 BEST DIRECTOR OSCAR AND TWO 2022 BAFTA AWARDS

Discover Thomas Savage's dark poetic tale of a small town in early 20th century American that inspired the new Jane Campion film.

WITH AN AFTERWORD BY ANNIE PROULX

Phil and George are brothers and joint owners of the biggest ranch in their Montana valley.

Phil is the bright one, George the plodder. Phil is tall and angular; George is stocky and silent. Phil is a brilliant chess player, a voracious reader, an eloquent storyteller; George learns slowly, and devotes himself to the business. They sleep in the room they shared as boys, and so it has been for forty years.

When George unexpectedly marries a young widow and brings her to live at the ranch, Phil begins a relentless campaign to destroy his brother's new wife. But he reckons without an unlikely protector.

From its visceral first paragraph to its devastating twist of an ending, The Power of the Dog will hold you in its grip.

'With its echoes of East of Eden and Brokeback Mountain, this satisfyingly complex story deserves another shot at rounding up public admiration' Guardian

© Thomas Savage 2016 (P) Penguin Audio 2021

Reviews

  • Optimistically billed as the next Stoner, this 1967 reissue is in fact the better novel...a rich and challenging psychodrama, based on brilliant characterisation... With its echoes of East of Eden and Brokeback Mountain, this satisfyingly complex story deserves another shot at rounding up public admiration

    Guardian

  • [Savage’s] prose is vivid and direct… [his] descriptions of nature have real power… a slow-burn psychological western.

    The Times

  • An exhilarating drama between two brothers set in Twenties Montana, and better even than Stoner

    Daily Telegraph

  • The shocking turn of the book’s final pages keeps the story bright as a blade to the end...This is the perfect example of a book that never quite made it to the rank of classic...but is more than worthy of resurrection now

    New Statesman

About the Author

Thomas Savage

Thomas Savage was born on 25 April 1915 in Salt Lake City, Utah, to a large sheep-ranching family. His parents divorced when he was two years old, and on his mother’s remarriage Savage moved with her to Montana. He studied at the University of Montana and worked as a ranch hand for several years, but when an article he wrote on horse-breaking was published in Coronet magazine in 1937, Savage enrolled at Colby College in Maine to study English. He went on to have a variety of jobs, including welder, insurance man and plumber as well as teaching English at Brandeis and Vassar. His first novel, The Pass, was published in 1944 and he went on to write twelve more, including The Power of the Dog. He was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship in 1980. Thomas Savage died in Virginia on 25 July 2003, aged eighty-eight.

Thomas Savage

Read more

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Features

Thomas Savage's The Power of the Dog: the twisted story of the book behind the Oscar-winning film

Before the Oscar nominations, Jane Campion’s bruising film was inspired by an even better novel. Thomas Savage’s masterpiece was lost to literary history – and the story behind it is stranger than fiction.
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Extracts

The Power of the Dog by Thomas Savage

Now a major Netflix film starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Kirsten Dunst and nominated for 12 Oscars, The Power of the Dog is a dark tale of a small town in 1920s Montana, in which author Thomas Savage examines masculinity from the perspective of a deeply homophobic, but closeted, rancher.

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