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All That Man Is

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All That Man Is

By: David Szalay
Narrated by: Huw Parmenter, Mark Meadows, Sean Barrett
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About this listen

Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2016
An ingenious book from the exceptional Granta Best Young British Novelist

Nine men: each of them at a different stage of life, away from home, and striving - in the suburbs of Prague, 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.

©2016 David Szalay (P)2016 W.F. Howes Ltd
Fiction Literary Fiction Witty Heartfelt

Critic Reviews

"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." (John Harding, Daily Mail)
"There is everything to relish about this intelligent, moving, thoroughly European search for the meaning of life.... It's hard to imagine listening a better audiobook this year." (Melissa Katsoulis, The Times)

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insightful

Any additional comments?

The book consists of a series of vignettes of different men through progressive life stages, from teenagers to a man stuggling with ageing. In this fashion, David Szalay has assembled a line-up of right proper bastards, every one of them! Motivated by little more than sex, money and power. The book deals with the meaning of life, but it's message is ultimately nihilistic. Still I found this book very enjoyable, for it's clever writing, rich insights and humour. I'm still thinking about it days later and suspect it's uncomfortably close to the truth.

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