Dirt - Couverture souple

"Vann’s gift – his quest, almost – is a willingness to explore the unimaginable, the unthinkable, on the page. He is the real thing – a mature, risk-taking and fantastically adept fiction writer who dares go to the darkest places, explore their most appalling corners. I haven’t read a novel as rough and shocking or, importantly, as wise and warm as this one in a long time." (Julie Myerson Observer)

"Vann’s rendering of the everyday gratings of family life is pitch-perfect ... A well-written, unflinching exploration of the often terrifying chasm between who we want to be, and who we actually are." (Sunday Telegraph)

"Vann is a brave writer, daring to write about and depict things that most other authors would baulk at, but that’s what makes him so good – that unflinching eye for the darkness you could potentially find in any of us, given the wrong chain of events ... If you want the naked, awful truth, then dive in." (Doug Johnstone Independent on Sunday)

"This is a novel of violence, destruction and ruin. There is no salvation. And yet Mr Vann’s soaring writing carries it forward – a reminder of the beauty that can grace even the beastliest things." (The Economist)

"Unputdownable, thundering at breathtaking speed towards the shocking climactic act. Brilliantly chilling." (Evening Standard)

David Vann was born in the Aleutian Islands and spent his childhood in Ketchikan, Alaska. His first book of fiction, the international bestseller Legend of a Suicide, has now been translated into seventeen languages and has won several prizes, including the Prix Medicis Etranger in France. His novel Caribou Island is an international bestseller. He is also the author of two bestselling non-fiction books, and has written for Atlantic Monthly, Esquire, the Sunday Times, Guardian, Sunday Telegraph, Financial Times and other magazines and newspapers. A current Guggenheim fellow and former Wallace Stegner fellow, he is currently a professor at the University of San Francisco.