Whipping Boy
- Author: Allen Kurzweil
- Narrator: Allen Kurzweil
- Publisher: HarperCollins USA
- Duration: 8:48:52
Synopsis
The true account of one man's lifelong search for his boarding-school bully
Equal parts childhood memoir and literary thriller, Whipping Boy chronicles Allen Kurzweil's search for his twelve-year-old nemesis, a bully named Cesar Augustus. The obsessive inquiry, which spans some forty years, takes Kurzweil all over the world, from a Swiss boarding school (where he endures horrifying cruelty) to the slums of Manila, from the Park Avenue boardroom of the world's largest law firm to a federal prison camp in Southern California. While tracking down his tormentor, the author encounters an improbable cast of characters that includes an elocution teacher with ill-fitting dentures, a gang of faux-royal swindlers, a crime investigator with "paper in his blood," and a monocled grand master of the Knights of Malta. Yet for all its global exoticism and comic exuberance, Kurzweil's riveting account is, at its core, a heartfelt and suspenseful narrative about the "parallel lives" of a victim and his abuser.
A scrupulously researched and richly illustrated work of nonfiction that renders a childhood menace into an unlikely muse, Whipping Boy is much more than a tale of karmic retribution; it is a poignant meditation on loss, memory, and mourning, a surreal odyssey born out of suffering, nourished by rancor, tempered by wit, and resolved, unexpectedly, in a breathtaking act of personal courage.
Chapters
-
001 - Whipping Boy
Duration: 38s -
002 - Part 1
Duration: 01min -
003 - Confession
Duration: 01min -
004 - Rules and Ranks
Duration: 07min -
005 - Weinerwald
Duration: 09min -
006 - The Marxist
Duration: 03min -
007 - Three Saints and An Emperor
Duration: 04min -
008 - Banister Surfing
Duration: 03min -
009 - Eat It, Nosey
Duration: 04min -
010 - Those Who Suffer Are Often Closer to God
Duration: 04min -
011 - Exes
Duration: 04min -
012 - Verrucas
Duration: 03min -
013 - Foosball
Duration: 03min -
014 - The Thirty-Nine Lashes
Duration: 04min -
015 - The Fountain Pen Wars
Duration: 05min -
016 - I Suppose My Inferiority Will Last
Duration: 03min -
017 - Tempus Fugit
Duration: 09min -
018 - Remission
Duration: 03min -
019 - Francoise
Duration: 04min -
020 - Part 2
Duration: 54s