David Szalay

A Spectator / New Statesman / Daily Telegraph / Guardian / Times Literary Supplement / Observer Book of the Year SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2016 MAN BOOKER PRIZE Winner of the 2016 Gordon Burn Prize 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.

All That Man Is

Shreerag Plakazhi

What is life? All Than Man Is is a poignant meditation on the different stages in a man's life (specifically masculine). It's collection of nine short stories that are simple slices of life on the surface but if you look deeper, you will see a strong message lying underneath, many times different messages. (view spoiler)[ I think the finally story sums it up well: as we go through through time, we will understand that the only thing eternal is time itself.  (hide spoiler)]

SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2016 MAN BOOKER PRIZENine 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 Isbrings 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.

Gary Homewood

Short stories of 9 European men from teanage to old age in countries not their own, struggling to find meaning, at crisis points in their lives. Mordant and sad, brilliantly written, encapsulating all the miniscule detail of varied male worlds and of different levels of male self awareness.

All that Man is

Artas Bartas

The critics loved this collection of short stories. "An investigation of European manhood," proclaimed NY Times. "Szalay grants each [character] a lyrical moment of sensory immersion in the world," gushes The Telegraph. "Here at last is a deeper picture of all that man is, or all that he might be," thunders the New Yorker. I call bullshit on all that. 

"All That Man Is" is a collection of tired stories that follows a very repetitive emotional arc. The protagonists are all white men. While that might bother a good number of progressives out there, I have no problem with that. What bothers me is how mundane the stories are. Szalay conjures his characters as they go, nay, drift through their daily lives with few things breaking up their routine. Even when characters *are* taken from their usual surroundings, they respond to the events unfolding in front of them with the emotional intensity of a lethargic walrus. 

I feel like I can parse the stern silences and repressed reactions of Szalay's characters better than most Western readers, after all, I grew up with the type of sullen men the writer so carefully tries to portray. And yet, even for me, the characters feel dull, forced, and unconvincing. These are men robbed of any hope, ambition, or positive feelings. Just lost individuals going through the motions of modern life, unable to rise above their situation. 

I feel like the type of people who would enjoy this book are literary curmudgeons, sexual predators outed by #metoo campaigners, and ISIS propagandists. While disagreeing on pretty much everything else, these three groups think that the cultural and social shifts of the last 50 years left white men subdued and defeated, while ushering the decline of the Western civilization. Seeing rudderless, embittered men come to life on the pages of this book, confirms their distorted perspective and leads them to hail Szalay as a type of writer who sees through appearances.

I tend to have some faith in humanity and think that being able to make choices about how to live your life is a great opportunity, not an existential burden. And so this book is not for me.

Katrina Wilson

Duarte

Finalist for the 2016 Man Booker Prize Winner of the 2016 Paris Review Plimpton Prize for Fiction A magnificent and ambitiously conceived portrait of contemporary life, by a genius of realism All That Man Is traces the arc of life from the spring of youth to the winter of old age by following nine men who range from the working-class ex-grunt to the pompous college student, the middle-aged loser to the Russian oligarch. Ludicrous and inarticulate, shocking and despicable, vital, pitiable, and hilarious, these men paint a picture of modern manhood. David Szalay is a master of a new kind of realism that vibrates with detail, intelligence, relevance, and devastating pathos. In All That Man Is, a Man Booker Prize finalist and the winner of the Gordon Burn Prize and the Plimpton Prize, he brilliantly illuminates the physical and emotional terrain of an increasingly globalized Europe. “Szalay’s prose . . . is frequently brilliant, remarkable for its grace and economy . . . [All That Man Is] has a new urgency now that the post-Cold War dream of a Europe of open borders and broad, shared identity has come under increasing question.” —Garth Greenwell, The New York Times Book Review “Szalay does so much and so well that we come to view his snapshots of lives as brilliant, captivating dramas.” —Star Tribune (Minneapolis) “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.” —The Sunday Times (London)

All That Man Is

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