A terrifying and dream-like new novel from one of our greatest contemporary writers. At a critical point in her career, painter Angelika Rossdal suddenly moves to Kvaloya, a small island deep in the Arctic Circle, to dedicate herself to the solitary pursuit of her craft. With her, she brings her young daughter, Liv, who grows up isolated and unable or unwilling to make friends her own age, spending much of her time alone, or with an elderly neighbour, Kyrre Jonsson, who beguiles her with old folk tales and stories about trolls, mermaids and -- crucially for the events that unfold in the...
A terrifying and dream-like new novel from one of our greatest contemporary writers. At a critical point in her career, painter Angelika Rossdal s...
"A master of beautiful language." --Hilary Mantel, author, Wolf Hall Corby, the industrial new town built around a vast steel works, draws many to the fires of its furnaces--in the hope of steady work, a better house, a fresh start. Among them are Francis Cameron, from Scotland, and his friend Jan Ruckert, the son of Latvian refugees. Alienated, intelligent, and curious, they form a strong and lasting bond: two teenage boys finding their feet in a foreign place. But violence hangs in the Corby air like the ash and the stench from the steel works, and when it comes down it is sudden...
"A master of beautiful language." --Hilary Mantel, author, Wolf Hall Corby, the industrial new town built around a vast steel works, draws ...
Tells the story of a lost and damaged world of childhood and the constants of his father's world: men defined by drink they could take and the pain they could stand, men shaped by their guilt and machismo. This book examines the way men are made and how they fall apart, about understanding in order to have a good son you must have a good father.
Tells the story of a lost and damaged world of childhood and the constants of his father's world: men defined by drink they could take and the pain th...
Once, on a winter's night many years ago, after a heavy snow, the devil passed through the Scottish fishing town of Coldhaven, leaving a trail of dark hoofprints across the streets and roofs of the sleeping town. Michael Gardiner has lived in Coldhaven all his life, but still feels like an outsider, a blow-in.
Once, on a winter's night many years ago, after a heavy snow, the devil passed through the Scottish fishing town of Coldhaven, leaving a trail of dark...
The sequel to 'A Lie About My Father', John Burnside's new memoir follows his hopeless quest for peace and mental security as the ghosts and terrors close in and the illusion of Surbiton falls apart. Unsettling, touching, oddly romantic and unflinchingly honest, this is the story of one man's search for sanity.
The sequel to 'A Lie About My Father', John Burnside's new memoir follows his hopeless quest for peace and mental security as the ghosts and terrors c...
The children of Homeland exist in a state of terror. Every year or so, a boy from their school disappears, vanishing into the wasteland of the old chemical plant. Nobody knows where the boys go, or if they are still alive. The town policeman was involved in the cover-up of one boy's murder, and is determined to find the killer.
The children of Homeland exist in a state of terror. Every year or so, a boy from their school disappears, vanishing into the wasteland of the old che...
Over 17 years and nine collections, John Burnside has built--in the words of Bernard O'Donoghue--"a poetic corpus of the first significance," a poetry of luminous, limpid grace. His territory is the no-man's-land of threshold and margin, the charmed half-light of the liminal, a domestic world threaded through with mystery, myth, and longing. In this volume these themes emerge and develop within the growing confidence of Burnside's sinuous lyric poise: the place of the individual in the world, the idea of dwelling and home, and the lure of absence and escape are set against the possibilities...
Over 17 years and nine collections, John Burnside has built--in the words of Bernard O'Donoghue--"a poetic corpus of the first significance," a poetry...
To the Shakers, a good song was a gift; indeed the test of a song s goodness was how much of a gift it was. In their call to "labour to make the way of God your own," Shaker artists expressed an aesthetic that had much in common with the old Japanese notion, attributed to Hokusai, that to paint bamboo, one had first to "become" bamboo. In his 10th collection, John Burnside begins with an interrogation of the gift song, treating matters of faith and connection, the community of living creatures and the idea of a free churchwhere faith is placed, not in dogma or a possible credo, but in the...
To the Shakers, a good song was a gift; indeed the test of a song s goodness was how much of a gift it was. In their call to "labour to make the way o...
John Burnside's seventh collection of poems explores the tension between the sanctuary of home and the lure of escape, his vision of a domestic world threaded through with myth and longing.
John Burnside's seventh collection of poems explores the tension between the sanctuary of home and the lure of escape, his vision of a domestic world ...
John Burnside's book is full of strange, unnerving poems that hang in the memory like a myth or a song. These are poems of thwarted love and disappointment, of raw desire, of the stalking beast; poems that recognise we have too much to gain from the gods, and this is why they fail to love us.Winner of the 2011 T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry.Shortlisted for Forward Poetry Prize for Best Collection 2011.
John Burnside's book is full of strange, unnerving poems that hang in the memory like a myth or a song. These are poems of thwarted love and disappoin...
