Summary
The 2018 Academy Award's Best Picture of the Year and New York Times -bestselling novel, The Shape of Water.
From visionary storyteller Guillermo del Toro and celebrated author Daniel Kraus comes this haunting, heartbreaking love story.
"[A] phenomenally enrapturing and reverberating work of art in its own right...[that] vividly illuminates the minds of the characters, greatly enhancing our understanding of their temperaments and predicaments and providing more expansive and involving story lines." -- Booklist
It is 1962, and Elisa Esposito--mute her whole life, orphaned as a child--is struggling with her humdrum existence as a janitor working the graveyard shift at Baltimore's Occam Aerospace Research Center. Were it not for Zelda, a protective coworker, and Giles, her loving neighbor, she doesn't know how she'd make it through the day.
Then, one fateful night, she sees something she was never meant to see, the Center's most sensitive asset ever: an amphibious man, captured in the Amazon, to be studied for Cold War advancements. The creature is terrifying but also magnificent, capable of language and of understanding emotions...and Elisa can't keep away. Using sign language, the two learn to communicate. Soon, affection turns into love, and the creature becomes Elisa's sole reason to live.
But outside forces are pressing in. Richard Strickland, the obsessed soldier who tracked the asset through the Amazon, wants nothing more than to dissect it before the Russians get a chance to steal it. Elisa has no choice but to risk everything to save her beloved. With the help of Zelda and Giles, Elisa hatches a plan to break out the creature. But Strickland is on to them. And the Russians are, indeed, coming.
Developed from the ground up as a bold two-tiered release--one story interpreted by two artists in the independent mediums of literature and film-- The Shape of Water is unlike anything you've ever read or seen.
"Most movie novelizations do little more than write down what audiences see on the screen. But the novel that's accompanying Guillermo del Toro's new movie The Shape of Water is no mere adaptation. Co-author Daniel Kraus' book and the film tell the same story, of a mute woman who falls in love with an imprisoned and equally mute creature, in two very different ways." --io9
Praise for The Shape of Water directed by Guillermo del Toro
Winner of the 2018 Academy Award for Best Picture
Winner of the 2018 Academy Award for Best Director
Winner of the 2018 Academy Award for Music (Original Score)
Winner of the 2018 Academy Award for Production Design
Winner of the 2018 Golden Globe Award for Best Director of a Motion Picture
"With encouragement from critics and awards voters, discerning viewers should make Fox Searchlight's December release the season's classiest date movie--for perhaps the greatest of The Shape of Water 's many surprises is how extravagantly romantic it is." -- Variety
"A visually and emotionally ravishing fantasy that should find a welcome embrace from audiences starved for imaginative escape." -- The Hollywood Reporter
Awarded the Golden Lion for Best Film at the 74th Annual Venice International Film Festival
Guillermo del Toro was born October 9, 1964 in Guadalajara Jalisco, Mexico. He is a Mexican director, producer, screen- writer and designer. He studied at the Instituto de Ciencias , University of Guadalajara. He was first exposed to film making when he was 8 years old and studied special effects and make-up with SFX artist Dick Smith. He spent 8 years as a special effects make-up designer and formed his own company, Necropia. He also founded the Guadalajara Film festival. Later he formed his own production company, The Tequila Gang. Guillermo del Toro has directed a variety of films from action hero comic book adaptations like Hellboy and Blade II to historical fantasy films. He has stated in interviews that he has a sort of fetish for insects, monsters, and dark places and is in love with monsters.
On June 2, 2009 he released his first novel, The Strain, which he co-authored with Chuck Hogan. It is intended to be the first book in a vampire trilogy. in September 2010 he released his book, Fall, which made The New York Times Bestseller list. He made Publisher's Weekly Bestseller List in 2011 with his title The Night Eternal, Book III of the Strain Trilogy. He and Daniel Kraus are the authors of , The Shape of Water (2018). It was made into a feature film and won four Academy Awards, a Golden Globe, and was awarded the Golden Lion for Best Film at the74th Annual Venice International Film Festival.
(Bowker Author Biography)
