Night People

“If my people ever met Gifford’s, they’d get along great.” —ELMORE LEONARD

Barry Gifford, the author of Wild at Heart and Sailor’s Holiday, writes of what Tennessee Williams called “something wild in the country/that only the night people know.” In Night People, America’s most “irresistibly gritty” (Washington Post) storyteller draws his characters from the shadows of the Deep South, where they confront rape, religious fanaticism, sexual confusion, racial discrimination, AIDS, child abuse, poverty—all the chaotic horror of the United States at the end of the twentieth century.

“Strange and original... gory and deviant... stylishly and humorously told.” —JON ELSEN, The New York Times

“A careening, half-hilarious, half-harrowing ride through the American South.” —MICHAEL HAINEY, Details

“Barry Gifford is a voice chuckling in the wilderness. You read him gleefully, with a terrified grin, fearful of becoming demented yourself.” —PHILIP KAUFMAN, filmmaker, Henry and June

“Gifford’s night people are pure American... pure in their madness... in their evil... and to read about... pure pleasure.” —ALAN CHEUSE, “All Things Considered,” National Public Radio