From the author of the acclaimed and provocative novels Fallen and The Preservationist comes a tale about a man who believes he is touched by the hand of God---and instructed by that God to slaughter his enemies. Told with crackling wit and black humor, this is the story of "this worldly existence of men & brutes desire & unkindness" and of the woman, the deadly and alluring Dalila, who figures at the center of it all. It's a story you think you know, but soon you will leave your preconceived notions at the door. In The Book of Samson, David Maine has created an unforgettable portrait, a unique and astonishing masterpiece that shows the human side of a previously faceless icon. Praise for the Books of David Maine: "David Maine's "Fallen" builds suspensefully toward what is arguably the best-known episode in the story of mankind: the banishment of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. Given the fact that its denouement will surprise exactly nobody, this book's power to rivet the reader approaches the miraculous." --"The New York Times" "A work of both high seriousness and wicked laughs." --"Entertainment Weekly" on "Fallen" "Maine is enormously talented at extrapolating rich characters from a few brief verses." --"The Washington Post" on "Fallen" "Artful and challenging...the topic is fascinating, and Maine's writing is suffused with an economical beauty." --"The Tampa Tribune" on "Fallen" "Think "Life of Pi" thousands of years earlier with a much larger cast of characters...this debut is a winner." --"Publishers Weekly" (starred review) on "The Preservationist" "Maine's storytelling is as human as it is divine.""" "--Los Angeles Times Book Review "on" The" "Preservationist" "Maine works a minor miracle by affecting a tone that is as respectful as it is insightful." --"People" magazine on "Fallen" David Maine was born in 1963 and grew up in Farmington, Connecticut. He attended Oberlin College and the University of Arizona and has worked in the mental-health systems of Massachusetts and Arizona. He has taught English in Morocco and Pakistan, and since 1998 has lived in Lahore, Pakistan, with his wife, novelist Uzma Aslam Khan. He is the author of books including Monster, 1959 and The Book of Samson. The Book of Samson By David Maine St. Martin's Griffin Copyright © 2007 David Maine All right reserved. ISBN: 9780312353384 This is the story of my life and it’s not a happy one. If you wish to read about me you’re welcome to but if you’re looking for something to give you hope & joy comfort & inspiration then you had best leave off here straightaway and go find something else. My life has an abundance of frustration and pain plus a fair bit of sex and lots of killing and broken bones but it’s got precious little hope & joy comfort & inspiration.   It’s got some women in it too plus a wife. Dalila is the one you may have heard of and a rare piece of work she was. You may think you know the story but believe me there’s more.   It’s an interesting question why anyone would seek hope & joy comfort & inspiration in a story in the first place. Something to think about. Maybe because there’s precious little of it in life so we gather up as much as we can find and put it in our stories where we know where it is and it can’t get out. But this story as I say isn’t like that. It starts and ends with me here in chains and in between if anything it gets worse. Betrayal adultery and murder all figure in words writ large as if in fire against the nighttime sky. With the story not even done yet it might get more hopeless still before my days in this world are over.   In fact I’m sure it will.   To give an idea of the killing: I once left a wedding feast to go kill thirty men and then went back to the wedding which flowed on like wine unabated. This in response to a riddle and a wager. So you see I’m not joking when I say that murder is writ large in my life in words like fire against the nighttime sky. The thirty men’s coats I removed from their stiffening bodies and then distributed to the wedding guests. Though normally prohibited from handling the bodies of the dead I was under some duress and consoled myself with thinking that they were so freshly killed that they were in fact not completely done with living as yet. Thus do we strike little bargains with ourselves and chip away at our integrity in the process.   The wedding where this took place was my own. Perhaps it conveys some idea of the nature of my in-laws that they took these new garments willingly enough and wore them happily afterward notwithstanding the rips bloodstains and other marks of wear.   I said this story begins in chains and so it does for I am in chains as I speak. They are iron and heavy and each link is the size of my hand and the thickness of my wrist. Mighty they are and in my prime they would have not held me but I’m no longer in my prime. As you might have guessed. The place of my enshacklement is a temple wondro