The Painter

Copyright

Copyright © 2014 by Peter Heller

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House LLC, New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto, Penguin Random House companies.

www.aaknopf.com

Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House LLC.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material:

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company: Excerpts from “Burnt Norton” and “Little Gidding” from Four Quartets by T. S. Eliot, copyright © 1936 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, copyright renewed 1964 by T. S. Eliot. Copyright © 1942 by T. S. Eliot, copyright renewed 1970 by Esme Valerie Eliot. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Random House: Excerpt from “The Panther” from Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke by Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Stephen Mitchell, translation copyright © 1982 by Stephen Mitchell. Reprinted by permission of Random House, an imprint and division of Random House LLC. All rights reserved.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Heller, Peter, [date]

The painter : a novel / Peter Heller.—First Edition.

pages cm

HC ISBN 978-0-385-35209-3 (hardback);

EBK ISBN 978-0-385-35208-6

1. Artists—Fiction. 2. Abstract expressionism—Fiction. 3. Ex-convicts—Fiction. 4. Life change events—Fiction. 5. Psychological fiction. I. Title.

PS3608.E454P35 2014

813’.6—dc23 2013045522

Jacket image: New Mexico Landscape (detail) by Jean Parrish. Private Collection / Phillips, Fine Art Auctioneers, New York, USA / The Bridgeman Art Library

Jacket design by Kelly Blair

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