All That Man Is

All That Man Is... looks increasingly like the masterpiece of British fiction from the past few years. -- David Sexton * Evening Standard *
David Szalay pushed at the fault lines between the novel and short story form in All That Man Is linked tales of European masculinity in crisis, whose effect is monumentally bleak, but which contain some of the best prose to be found in English this year. -- Justine Jordan * Guardian Books of the Year *
Szalay's writing is exact and true and always subtly intelligent; this book is bracing and thrilling and chilling. -- Tessa Hadley
It’s a rare and wonderous event when a novel changes the way you look at the world around you; and this was the case with [All That Man Is]… A worthy winner of the Gordon Burn Prize this year. Gordon Burn would have loved it. Say no more. -- William Boyd * New Statesman, Book of the Year *
There is everything to relish about this intelligent, moving, thoroughly European search for the meaning of life ... It's hard to imagine reading a better book this year. -- Melissa Katsoulis * Times *
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 *
Trains a high-powered microscope on modern life… Szalay might have found in All that Man Is the perfect vehicle for his particular talent… It brings a sensory richness to the bleak and the drab… A showcase for Szalays virtuosic range… Each character is in crisis...yet Szalay grants each a lyrical moment of sensory immersion in the world. It is the resonance of these moments of fleeting transcendence that form the structure of this strange and lucid novel. -- Duncan White * Daily Telegraph *
Here is a newish, youngish…contemporary British novelist worth catching up on and following… Luxuriant and Hobbesian… Szalay is an offended satirist with a remarkable verbal imagination… Szalay’s prose with its ruthlessly banal dialogue, arm-twisting present tense, shard-like fragments…irresistibly brilliant epithet or startlingly quotable phrase, lets nothing go to waste. * London Review of Books *
All That Man Is is a triumph… By the fourth chapter the book as a whole has become gripping… Szalay has harnessed the natural energy of time, and the result is 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. * Sunday Times *
[Szalay is] capable of conjuring tenderness from any situation… Szalay keeps the writing so judgment-free and is so honest about the unpredictability of desire… [Readers] will find a great deal to enjoy in these pages, and further evidence that Szalay…is one of the best fortysomething writers we have. * Observer *
Szalay exposes the vulnerability that belies young men’s sexual bravado… Szalay takes us inside distinctive worlds. * Independent *
Szalay’s writing is always sensitive, often funny and brilliantly observed… This is a very poignant piece of writing… All That Man Is does have the feel of a novel: in its evenness of tone, its thematic coherence, its driving sense of purpose… This is a quietly dazzling book by a writer who thoroughly deserves his growing reputation. * Literary Review *
He is one of those rare writers with skill in all the disciplines that first-rate fiction requires. The most immediate pleasure is his literary intelligence… Szalay’s writing is virtuosic… These are the best short stories I’ve read for ages. * Guardian *
He exposes with clear-sighted precision the multiple and (largely) disastrous failings of his characters… Szalay is too sharp by far to overstate the inevitable impact of his fellow man's actions… He exposes the problem in such style and with such rigour. -- Gary Kaill * Skinny *
He writes clean, unshowy sentences that move easily between the diction of casual speech and a more distanced tone. And he’s able to hold a reader even when there isn’t much going on, relying on assured storytelling rather than busy plotting. All this means that the new book goes down smoothly. It’s also a bit of a tour de force when it comes to social and geographical reach… It’s part of Szalay’s appeal that he’s more interested in getting at the texture of experience than he is in stuffing it into elegant packaging. -- Christopher Tayler * Financial Times *