Summary
Charlie Gordon knows that he isn't very bright. At 32, he mops floors in a bakery and earns just enough to get by. Three evenings a week, he studies at a center for retarded adults. But all of this is about to change for Charlie. As part of a daring experiment, doctors are going to perform surgery o... Full description
Summary: |
Charlie Gordon knows that he isn't very bright. At 32, he mops floors in a bakery and earns just enough to get by. Three evenings a week, he studies at a center for retarded adults. But all of this is about to change for Charlie. As part of a daring experiment, doctors are going to perform surgery on Charlie's brain. They hope the operation and special medication will increase his intelligence, just as it has for the laboratory mouse, Algernon. Meanwhile, each day Charlie keeps a diary of what is happening to him. This is his poignant record of the startling changes in his mind and his life. Flowers for Algernon was first published as a short story, but soon received wide acclaim as it appeared in anthologies, as a television special, and as an award-winning motion picture, Charly. In its final, expanded form, this haunting story won the Nebula Award for the Best Novel of the Year. Through Jeff Woodman's narration, now it becomes an unforgettable audio experience. |
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Item Description: |
Unabridged. |
Physical Description: |
1 online resource (10 audio files) : digital |
Playing Time: |
08::5:9: |
Format: |
Requires OverDrive Listen (file size: N/A KB) or OverDrive app (file size: 253499 KB). |
Audience: |
Text Difficulty 4 - Text Difficulty 5 910 |
ISBN: |
9781464043109 |
Author Notes: |
In 1959, his novella Flowers for Algernon was published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and won the Hugo Award for best short fiction in 1960. By 1966 he had expanded the story into a novel with the same title, which tied for the Nebula Award for best novel that year. The novel was adapted as a stage play, developed as a dramatic musical, and adapted into a movie entitled Charly for which Cliff Robertson won the Academy Award for best actor. During his lifetime, he wrote several more novels including The Touch, The Fifth Sally, and Until Death. His three nonfiction books include The Minds of Billy Milligan, The Milligan Wars: A True-Story Sequel, and Unveiling Claudia. He also wrote a memoir entitled Algernon, Charlie and I. He died from complications of pneumonia on June 15, 2014 at the age of 86. (Bowker Author Biography) |