Kane and Abel (novel)
Kane and Abel is a 1979 novel about wealthy American William Lowell Kane, and poor Polish immigrant Abel Rosnovski, born Wladek Koskiewicz, and their lifelong struggle to recognize the American dream.
- Written by Jeffrey Archer
Quotes
[edit]- Narrator (About Abel's mother): She only stopped screaming when she died. It was then that he started to scream.
- Chapter 1, Page 11
- Franck Koskiewicz: Holy God.
- Chapter 1, Page 12
- Narrator : The worst earthquake ever in the history of America. Devastation in San Fransisco, at least four hundred people dead—others would be mourning. He hated that. It would take away from the birth of his son. People would remember that something else had happened on this day.
- Chapter 2, Page 16 : About Richard Kane's thoughts as he reads the morning news
- Jasio Koskiewicz (About Abel): Have you noticed this Helena? The ugly little bastard has only one nipple?
- Chapter 3, Page 21
- Helena Koskiewicz (As Abel leaves to the castle): Ah, Matka's littlest one, what will become of you now?
- Chapter 5, Page 33
- Leon: We have wooden swords and shields. We are not afraid of Germans or Russians.
- Chapter 5, Page 40
- Soldier (After raping Florentyna): I think I've made love to a dead woman.
- Chapter 7, Page 65
- Abel (To a soldier) I will live, you will not kill me. This is my home, and you are on my land.
- Chapter 9, Page 77
- Doctor Dubien (As Abel prepares to escape the prison camp): Good luck, Wladek. I hope we never meet again.
- Chapter 9, Page 89
- Abel (In response to Stefan's shock at him eating an unskinned potato.) I've been places where the skins are a luxury.
- Chapter 9, Page 105
Dialogue
[edit]- Leon (Looking at a pile of dead bodies): Is papa there? Is papa there?
- Soldier: Wer hat gesprochen?
- Who said that?
- Abel: Ich.
- Me.
- Chapter 5, Page 41
- William (As his father is lost at sea): Tomorrow I will find him.
- Anne: William, no one can survive for three weeks in the North Atlantic.
- William: Not even my father?
- Anne: Not even your father.
- Chapter 6, Page 52
- William (To his grandmother who is concealing her grief at her son's death): Don't you miss my father?
- Grandmother Kane: Yes my child, but he would not have wished us to sit around and feel sorry for ourselves.
- William: But I want us to remember him—always.
- Chapter 6, Page 53
- Baron Rosnovski (Seeing Abel's missing nipple): Wladek, can you explain this small deformity?
- Abel: No sir. It has been with me since birth. My foster mother used to say it was the mark of God the father on me.
- Baron Rosnovski: Stupid women. It is the mark of your own father.
- Chapter 7, Page 58
