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All that Man Is
Nine men. Each of them at a different stage of life, each of them away from home, and each of them striving – in the suburbs of Prague, beside a Belgian motorway, in a cheap Cypriot hotel – to understand just what it means to be alive, here and now.
Tracing an arc from the spring of youth to the winter of old age, All That Man Is brings these separate lives together to show us men as they are – ludicrous and inarticulate, shocking and despicable; vital, pitiable, hilarious, and full of heartfelt longing. And as the years chase them down, the stakes become bewilderingly high in this piercing portrayal of 21st-century manhood.
Tracing an arc from the spring of youth to the winter of old age, All That Man Is brings these separate lives together to show us men as they are – ludicrous and inarticulate, shocking and despicable; vital, pitiable, hilarious, and full of heartfelt longing. And as the years chase them down, the stakes become bewilderingly high in this piercing portrayal of 21st-century manhood.
Paperback
Published January 1, 2016
15 people want to read
About the author
David Szalay
16 books567 followersDavid Szalay (born 1974 in Montreal, Quebec) is an English writer.
He was born in Canada, moved to the UK the following year and has lived there ever since. He studied at Oxford University and has written a number of radio dramas for the BBC.
He won the Betty Trask Award for his first novel, London and the South-East, along with the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize. Since then he has written two other novels: Innocent (2009) and Spring (2011).
He has also recently been named one of The Telegraph's Top 20 British Writers Under 40 and has also made it onto Granta magazine's 2013 list of the Best of Young British Novelists.
A fourth novel All That Man Is was longlisted for The Man Booker Prize 2016.
He was born in Canada, moved to the UK the following year and has lived there ever since. He studied at Oxford University and has written a number of radio dramas for the BBC.
He won the Betty Trask Award for his first novel, London and the South-East, along with the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize. Since then he has written two other novels: Innocent (2009) and Spring (2011).
He has also recently been named one of The Telegraph's Top 20 British Writers Under 40 and has also made it onto Granta magazine's 2013 list of the Best of Young British Novelists.
A fourth novel All That Man Is was longlisted for The Man Booker Prize 2016.
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December 12, 2024
Bleak. Seven stories, each about people seeming to be hanging on the periphery of their lives. Stunned, wondering How did I get here, and what now?
I became rather depressed by the fifth, and was going to quit. I'm glad I didn't. The last two stories were gems.
This poem, in the seventh:
The portrait shows this:
His eyes fixed elsewhere, Miqmiq the Conqueror holds a rose to the Turkic scimitar of his nose
The engrossing necessities of money and war
The wise politician's precautionary fratricides
The apt play of power, all proper activities in his sphere
And he excelled at them all
So why the flower
A nod, perhaps, to something less worldly
Not beauty, I think, whatever that is
No love, not nature
Not Allah, by that or any other name
Just a moment's immersion in the texture of existence
The eternal passing of time
I became rather depressed by the fifth, and was going to quit. I'm glad I didn't. The last two stories were gems.
This poem, in the seventh:
The portrait shows this:
His eyes fixed elsewhere, Miqmiq the Conqueror holds a rose to the Turkic scimitar of his nose
The engrossing necessities of money and war
The wise politician's precautionary fratricides
The apt play of power, all proper activities in his sphere
And he excelled at them all
So why the flower
A nod, perhaps, to something less worldly
Not beauty, I think, whatever that is
No love, not nature
Not Allah, by that or any other name
Just a moment's immersion in the texture of existence
The eternal passing of time
Displaying 1 of 1 review