SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2016 MAN BOOKER PRIZE
Men as they really are... An ingenious book from the exceptional
Granta Best Young British Novelist
David Szalay is the author of five previous works of fiction- Spring, The Innocent, London and the South-East, for which he was awarded the Betty Trask and Geoffrey Faber Memorial prizes, All That Man Is, for which he was awarded the Gordon Burn prize and Plimpton Prize for Fiction, and shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, and Turbulence, which won the Edge Hill Prize. Born in Canada, he grew up in London, and now lives in Vienna. His work has been translated into over twenty languages.
All That Man Is... looks increasingly like the masterpiece of
British fiction from the past few years.
*Evening Standard*
David Szalay pushed at the fault lines between the novel and short
story form in All That Man Is linked tales of European masculinity
in crisis, whose effect is monumentally bleak, but which contain
some of the best prose to be found in English this year.
*Guardian Books of the Year*
Szalay's writing is exact and true and always subtly intelligent;
this book is bracing and thrilling and chilling.
*Tessa Hadley*
It’s a rare and wonderous event when a novel changes the way you
look at the world around you; and this was the case with [All That
Man Is]… A worthy winner of the Gordon Burn Prize this year. Gordon
Burn would have loved it. Say no more.
*New Statesman, Book of the Year*
There is everything to relish about this intelligent, moving,
thoroughly European search for the meaning of life ... It's hard to
imagine reading a better book this year.
*Times*
This feels like a great novel driven by its overarching theme: what
is my life, here and now, all about? ... Rarely has it been so
brilliantly and chillingly spelled out.
*Daily Mail*
Trains a high-powered microscope on modern life… Szalay might have
found in All that Man Is the perfect vehicle for his particular
talent… It brings a sensory richness to the bleak and the drab… A
showcase for Szalays virtuosic range… Each character is in
crisis...yet Szalay grants each a lyrical moment of sensory
immersion in the world. It is the resonance of these moments of
fleeting transcendence that form the structure of this strange and
lucid novel.
*Daily Telegraph*
Here is a newish, youngish…contemporary British novelist worth
catching up on and following… Luxuriant and Hobbesian… Szalay is an
offended satirist with a remarkable verbal imagination… Szalay’s
prose with its ruthlessly banal dialogue, arm-twisting present
tense, shard-like fragments…irresistibly brilliant epithet or
startlingly quotable phrase, lets nothing go to waste.
*London Review of Books*
All That Man Is is a triumph… By the fourth chapter the book as a
whole has become gripping… Szalay has harnessed the natural energy
of time, and the result is a 100-megawatt novel: intelligent,
intricate, so very well made. The form perfectly fitting the
content. When I reached the end, I turned straight back to the
start to begin again.
*Sunday Times*
[Szalay is] capable of conjuring tenderness from any situation…
Szalay keeps the writing so judgment-free and is so honest about
the unpredictability of desire… [Readers] will find a great deal to
enjoy in these pages, and further evidence that Szalay…is one of
the best fortysomething writers we have.
*Observer*
Szalay exposes the vulnerability that belies young men’s sexual
bravado… Szalay takes us inside distinctive worlds.
*Independent*
Szalay’s writing is always sensitive, often funny and brilliantly
observed… This is a very poignant piece of writing… All That Man Is
does have the feel of a novel: in its evenness of tone, its
thematic coherence, its driving sense of purpose… This is a quietly
dazzling book by a writer who thoroughly deserves his growing
reputation.
*Literary Review*
He is one of those rare writers with skill in all the disciplines
that first-rate fiction requires. The most immediate pleasure is
his literary intelligence… Szalay’s writing is virtuosic… These are
the best short stories I’ve read for ages.
*Guardian*
He exposes with clear-sighted precision the multiple and (largely)
disastrous failings of his characters… Szalay is too sharp by far
to overstate the inevitable impact of his fellow man's actions… He
exposes the problem in such style and with such rigour.
*Skinny*
He writes clean, unshowy sentences that move easily between the
diction of casual speech and a more distanced tone. And he’s able
to hold a reader even when there isn’t much going on, relying on
assured storytelling rather than busy plotting. All this means that
the new book goes down smoothly. It’s also a bit of a tour de force
when it comes to social and geographical reach… It’s part of
Szalay’s appeal that he’s more interested in getting at the texture
of experience than he is in stuffing it into elegant packaging.
*Financial Times*
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