The Bridge of San Luis Rey is American author Thornton Wilder's second novel, first published in 1927 to worldwide acclaim. It tells the story of several interrelated people who die in the collapse of an Inca rope-fiber suspension bridge in Peru, and the events that lead up to their being on the bridge. A friar who has witnessed the tragic accident then goes about inquiring into the lives of the victims, seeking some sort of cosmic answer to the question of why each had to die. The novel won the Pulitzer Prize in 1928. The first few pages of the first chapter of The Bridge of San Luis Rey... explain the book's basic premise: this story centers on a event that happened in Lima, Peru, at noon of Friday, July 20, 1714. A bridge woven by the Incas a century earlier collapsed at that particular moment, while five people were crossing it. The collapse was witnessed by Brother Juniper, a Franciscan monk who was on his way to cross it. Wanting to show the world of God's Divine Providence, he sets out to interview everyone he can find who knew the five victims.
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| Author: | Thornton Wilder, Thomas Richter |
| Genre: | Novel, Fiction, Novella |
| Year published: | 1927 |
| Number of editions: | 23 |