Whipping Boy

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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
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