THE WASHINGTON POST'S TOP TEN NOTABLE BOOKS OF THE YEAR โข WINNER OF THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE โข SHORTLISTED FOR PRIX FรMINA ETRANGER โข LONGLISTED FOR PRIX MรDICIS โข An exquisite, genre-defying new book from the Booker Prizeโwinning author of The Narrow Road to the Deep North, a reckoning with his life and family, and the role of fiction in our times
"Spectacular. . . A book that will have an overwhelming effect on readers.โ โColm Tรณibรญn, author of Long Island
Sometimes I wonder why we keep returning to beginningsโwhy we seek the single thread we might pull to unravel the tapestry we call our life...
By way of H. G. Wells and Rebecca Westโs affair through 1930s nuclear physics to Flanagan's father working as a slave laborer near Hiroshima when the atom bomb is dropped, this daisy chain of events reaches fission when Flanagan as a young man finds himself trapped in a rapid on a wild river not knowing if he is to live or to die.
At once a love song to his island home and to his parents, this hypnotic melding of dream, history, place and memory is about how our lives so often arise out of the stories of others and the stories we invent about ourselves.