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
Nine men. Each of them at a different stage in life, each of them away from home, and each of them striving—in the suburbs of Prague, in an overdeveloped Alpine village, beside a Belgian motorway, in a dingy Cyprus hotel—to understand what it means to be alive, here and now. Tracing a dramatic arc from the spring of youth to the winter of old age, the ostensibly separate narratives of All That Man Is aggregate into a picture of a single shared existence, a picture that interrogates the state of modern manhood while bringing to life, unforgettably, the physical and emotional terrain of an increasingly globalized Europe. And so these nine lives form an ingenious and new kind of novel, in which David Szalay expertly plots a dark predicament for the twenty-first-century man.
Dark and disturbing, but also often wickedly and uproariously comic, All That Man Is is notable for the acute psychological penetration Szalay brings to bear on his characters, from the working-class ex-grunt to the pompous college student, the middle-aged loser to the Russian oligarch. Steadily and mercilessly, as this brilliantly conceived book progresses, the protagonist at the center of each chapter is older than the last one, it gets colder out, and All That Man Is gathers exquisite power. Szalay is a writer of supreme gifts—a master of a new kind of realism that vibrates with detail, intelligence, relevance, and devastating pathos.
- Enjoyed this year's Long Island Reads selection? Check out these titles too!
- Women's History Month
- Ramadan & Eid al-Fitr
- March Madness: Basketball
- Not Just Another Teen Book- YA for Adults
- Page to Screen
- Retro Reads - Books from the 1900s
- Librarians Love Gettin' Cozy
- Best Books of 2023
- Rick Riordan
- Avatar- The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra
- Celebrate Disney 100 Years and Counting!
- #LiveYourBestLife Adult Reads
- See all
- Enjoyed this year's Long Island Reads selection? Check out these titles too!
- Women's History Month
- Ramadan & Eid al-Fitr
- Page to Screen
- Listen While You Run: Audiobooks for Workouts
- Not Just Another Teen Book- YA for Adults
- Librarians Love Gettin' Cozy
- Retro Reads - Books from the 1900s
- Welcome to Night Vale Listen-ALikes
- Now Available! Popular Audiobooks You May Have Missed
- Best Books of 2023
- Rick Riordan
- #LiveYourBestLife Adult Reads
- See all
- #ownvoices / Diverse Books
- Antiracism Resources
- Sheet Music & Song Books
- Bücher auf Deutsch / Books in German
- Civil Service Test Prep
- The Great Courses
- QuickReads Collection
- See all