The Iron Bridge delivers an inspired inquiry into the early lives of the 20th century's most notorious tyrants. Anton Piatigorsky pushes at the boundaries of the unexpected as he breathes fictionalized life into the adolescents who would grow up to become the most brutal dictators the world has ever known.We discover a teenaged Mao Tse-Tung refusing an arranged marriage; Idi Amin cooking for the British Army; Stalin living in a seminary; and a melodramatic young Adolf Hitler dreaming of vast architectural achievements. Pol Pot and Rafael Trujillo are also subjects of separate stories. Piatigorsky explores moments that are nothing more than vague incidents in the biographies of these men, expanding mere footnotes into entire realities. The Iron Bridge, completely imagined yet captivatingly real, captures those crucial instants in time that may well have helped to deliver some of the most infamous leaders in history.From the Trade Paperback edition.

Al-Tounsi is the debut novel by the award-winning playwright, Anton Piatigorsky, and tells the story of the US Supreme Court's handling of a landmark case involving the rights of detainees held in a US military base. Although the novel follows the case as it maneuvers through the minds and hands of the Justices—the larger-than-life Killian Quinn in the throes of a dangerous affair, the ambitious but insecure Gideon Rosen desperate to make his mark on history, the famed feminist Sarah Kolmann staring down the prospect of losing her husband to cancer—it is ultimately shepherded by one Justice in particular, Rodney Sykes, who begins the novel in emotional crisis. After his wife's sudden death a year earlier, his relationship with Cassandra, his grown daughter, is in tatters, and he feels unable to repair it. As news of Cassandra's affair with her boss, a prominent circuit court Judge, comes to light, Rodney confronts his own repression and demons, and gradually allows his...