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Book Home  Books Information Gunslinger
Gunslinger
The Gunslinger is a book by horror novelist Stephen King, and
is the first book in the Dark Tower series, which King considers
to be his magnum opus. The book and subsequent series was inspired
by the poem "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came" by
Robert Browning.
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Early portions of the book were written
when King was only 19. The Gunslinger was first published in 1982 as
a limited edition, with its first mass-market publication as a trade
paperback in 1988 followed by several re-issues in various formats and
in boxed sets with other volumes of the series. In 2003 the book was
reissued in modified form, with scenes added and other changes made
to resolve inconsistencies with the later books in the series.
The book begins, "The man in black fled across
the desert, and the gunslinger followed." It tells the story
of The Gunslinger, Roland of Gilead, and his inexplicable quest to
chase the Man in Black, which will ultimately lead him to the Dark
Tower.
The book takes place in a world that is recognizable
as the American West but in an alternate timeframe or parallel universe
to ours; Roland exists in a place where "the world has moved
on." Roland is a Gunslinger, his world's answer to the knight-errant,
and he follows the trail of his fatal obsession.
The Gunslinger takes the form of a series of interleaved
flashbacks, as Roland's quest is interrupted with dreamlike vignettes
from his youth. By far the most stylized and enigmatic of King's longer
works, the book is perhaps best seen as an introductory tableau or
prologue to the entire series, the subsequent books of which are much
more concrete and linear in their story-telling.
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