Peter Heller - The Dog Stars

8. The Dog Stars is a serious book about a devastating subject, but what are some of its more lighthearted moments? Why is it important that the book have this mixture of tenderness and violence, anxiety and peace?

9. What has caused the end of human civilization in the novel? Why have the scattered survivors become so savage? Does the postapocalyptic world Heller presents seem accurate and likely, given the state of the world today?

10. Why is Hig’s relationship with Cima so important in the novel? What makes it particularly touching, given what each of them has suffered?

11. The novel’s ending is ambiguous. Cima, Hig, Bangley, and Pops have formed a kind of family, the spruce and aspen are coming back, eagles and hawks are flourishing, but the trout and elk are gone, water is disappearing, and mysterious jets are flying overhead. What might happen next, or in the next ten years, for these characters and the world they live in?

12. Why does Heller conclude The Dog Stars with Hig’s favorite poem “When Will I Be Home?” by Li Shang-Yin? Why is this a fitting way to end the story? In what ways is the novel about the longing for home?

13. What does the novel imply about human nature, after the constraints of civilization have been removed? What does it suggest about the possible consequences of the way we are living now?

14. What similarities does The Dog Stars share with other recent dystopian novels like The Hunger Games and The Road ? In what important ways does it differ from them?

J. G. Ballard, The Drowned World; Max Brooks, World War Z; Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games; Justin Cronin, The Passage; Cormac McCarthy, The Road; Walter M. Miller, Jr., A Canticle for Leibowitz; Kim Stanley Robinson, The Wild Shore; Mary Shelley, The Last Man; Alan Weisman, The World Without Us

Copyright © 2012 by Peter Heller

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

www.aaknopf.com

Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material:

New Directions Publishing Corp.: Excerpt from “‘When Will I Be Home?’ by Li Shang Yin” from One Hundred More Poems from the Chinese by Kenneth Rexroth.

Copyright © 1970 by Kenneth Rexroth. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.

Graywolf Press: Excerpt from “Farms on the Great Plains” from The Way It Is: New and Selected Poems by William Stafford. Copyright © 1959, 1998 by William Stafford and the Estate of William Stafford. Reprinted by permission of The Permissions Company, Inc., on behalf of Graywolf Press, Minneapolis, Minnesota, www.graywolfpress.org.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Heller, Peter, [date]

The dog stars: a novel Peter Heller. — 1st ed.

p. cm.

“This is a Borzoi book.”

eISBN: 978-0-307-96093-1

1. End of the world—Fiction. 2. Survival—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3608.E454D642012

813′.6—dc23 2011050429

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Jacket design by Kelly Blair

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