The Hunters

Resumen del libro

Captain Cleve Connell arrives in Korea with a single goal: to become an ace, one of that elite fraternity of jet pilots who have downed five MIGs. But as his fellow airmen rack up kill after kill - sometimes under dubious circumstances - Cleve's luck runs bad. Other pilots question his guts. Cleve comes to question himself. And then in one icy instant 40,000 feet above the Yalu River, his luck changes forever. Filled with courage and despair, eerie beauty and corrosive rivalry, James Salter's luminous first novel is a landmark masterpiece in the literature of war.

Extract from The Hunters by James Salter

It was almost noon when they crossed the Korean coast. Cleve stared anxiously at it, drifting past beneath the wing. He knew a moment of acute fulfillment, for here he would make a valedictory befitting his years. He had come along way for it, and much was still ahead; but already he could feel self-imposed obligations, his burden of pride, diminishing, actually leaving him. He began to experience something of the exhilaration that came with triumph. In this war, he was more certain than ever, he would attain himself, as men do who venture past all that is known.

He looked about the cabin. Everyone was leaning toward the nearest window to see the land below, which lay calm as wreckage in the clear winter air. Not much could be distinguished to show where the war had been. Smooth fields of snow mottled everything, and the rivers were as pronounced as veins, but he did not think of an ancient mother of men. His eye was the flyer's. He saw the hostile mountains, the absence of good landmarks, and the few places flat enough to land in an emergency.

They had fought down there, on foot, taking weeks to move the distance he went in an hour. He was arriving like a tourist, in comfort. He felt the detachment of a specialist, and the importance. His gaze moved for a while to the heavy wing and the out-board nacelle, which was the only one he could see. A broad slick of oil, black and gleaming, was spread back from the cowling. He went back to staring moodily at the land.

Within an hour they had landed at Seoul. It was a blue, bitter February afternoon. Cleve stepped off the plane onto Korean ground frozen as hard as plaster. A sharp wind was keening across the flats. It stung his cheeks and made the rims of his ears ache. It came with the sharpness of steel into his lungs when he breathed. His eyes watered.

He followed along in the string of debarking passengers. They walked across a bare expanse of earth toward buildings near which were mounds of baggage, barracks bags, and groups of waiting men huddled in their overcoats. He walked past them and into the biggest hut. Inside it was crowded, too, and almost as cold. Men were clustered about the two oil stoves, warming their hands. Cleve hesitated, then began pushing through them with difficulty toward a counter he could see at the far end of the room. There he inquired, as soon as he had an opportunity to, about going onto Kimpo. He had no idea how long an additional trip it might be.

Biografía del autor

x{0026}lt;P x{0026}lt;B James Salterx{0026}lt;/B (Nueva York, 1925-Sag Harbor, 2015) estudió Ingeniería en West Point y en 1945 ingresó en las Fuerzas Aéreas. Fue piloto de caza y combatió en la Guerra de Corea. Publicó su primera obra, x{0026}lt;I Los cazadoresx{0026}lt;/I , en 1956, y un año después abandonó el ejército para dedicarse a la literatura. Durante una década trabajó como periodista, escribió guiones y dirigió películas para Hollywood. x{0026}lt;I Juego y distracciónx{0026}lt;/I (1967), su tercera novela, consolidó su reputación. A ésta siguieron x{0026}lt;I Años luzx{0026}lt;/I (1975), x{0026}lt;I En solitariox{0026}lt;/I (1979), la serie de relatos x{0026}lt;I Anochecer x{0026}lt;/I (1988) y el libro de memorias x{0026}lt;I Quemar los díasx{0026}lt;/I (1997). Entre ese año y el 2000 sólo publicó sendas revisiones de sus dos primeras novelas, y en 2005, un nuevo conjunto de relatos titulado x{0026}lt;I La última nochex{0026}lt;/I . Por último, la aparición, en 2013, de x{0026}lt;I Todo lo que hayx{0026}lt;/I constituyó el acontecimiento del año en Estados Unidos. Salter recibió numerosos premios a lo largo de su vida, entre otros el PEN/Faulkner en 1989, el Rea en 2010, el Hadada en 2011, el PEN/Malamud en 2012 y el Windham Campbell en 2013.x{0026}lt;/P