Goodreads Choice Awards Finalists 2025
Denis Johnson

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Denis Johnson


Born
in Munich, Germany
July 01, 1949

Died
May 24, 2017

Genre
Literature & Fiction, Poetry

Influences
Robert Stone, Malcolm Lowry, Raymond Carver, Jack Kerouac, Saul Bello ...more


Poet, playwright and author Denis Johnson was born in Munich, West Germany, in 1949 and was raised in Tokyo, Manila and Washington. He earned a masters' degree from the University of Iowa and received many awards for his work, including a Lannan Fellowship in Fiction (1993), a Whiting Writer's Award (1986), the Aga Khan Prize for Fiction from the Paris Review for Train Dreams, and most recently, the National Book Award for Fiction (2007).
 ...more

Combine Editions

Average rating: 3.87 · 134,612 ratings · 14,717 reviews · 60 distinct works • Similar authors
Jesus’ Son
4.12 avg rating — 40,148 ratings — published 1992 — 77 editions
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Train Dreams
3.90 avg rating — 32,297 ratings — published 2002 — 53 editions
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Tree of Smoke
3.60 avg rating — 15,203 ratings — published 2004 — 60 editions
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The Largesse of the Sea Maiden
3.94 avg rating — 9,497 ratings — published 2018 — 2 editions
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Angels
3.99 avg rating — 5,842 ratings — published 1977
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Nobody Move
3.35 avg rating — 5,105 ratings — published 2009 — 47 editions
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The Laughing Monsters
3.18 avg rating — 4,226 ratings — published 2014
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Already Dead: A California ...
3.71 avg rating — 2,603 ratings — published 1997 — 14 editions
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The Name of the World
3.55 avg rating — 2,650 ratings — published 2000 — 18 editions
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Fiskadoro
3.54 avg rating — 2,025 ratings — published 1985 — 12 editions
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More books by Denis Johnson…

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Quotes by Denis Johnson  (?)
Quotes are added by the Goodreads community and are not verified by Goodreads. (Learn more)

“She wanted to eat my heart and be lost in the desert with what she'd done, she wanted to fall on her knees and give birth from it, she wanted to hurt me as only a child can be hurt by its mother.”
― Denis Johnson
124 likes
Like

“I knew every raindrop by its name.”
― Denis Johnson, Jesus' Son
111 likes
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“English words are like prisms. Empty, nothing inside, and still they make rainbows.”
― Denis Johnson
tags: words
104 likes
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Polls

We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.

This is the first line of what book?

 
  24 votes, 70.6%

 
  4 votes, 11.8%

 
  4 votes, 11.8%

 
  2 votes, 5.9%

34 total votes
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Topics Mentioning This Author

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