All That Man Is

Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2016

‘The day is windless.
It’s not a joke,
Life is not a joke.’

What does it mean to be a man? What does it mean to be a man here and now, in this place, in this time?

Szalay’s fourth novel offers a glimpse into the nine men’s lives. Men from across Europe, from different backgrounds; men like Gábor, staring out from a taxi window at a glossy London light heading into the city in search of money and Bérnard, stuck in a seedy hotel bar in Cyprus. Alien worlds and disparate lives collide as Szalay reveals a common struggle, a drive to perpetually move forward, to be successful and to find meaning amidst the chaos.
As the stories wind from the lives of feckless students and desperate emigres to an ambitious journalist and retired civil servant, Szalay gives a sense of whole lives lived out through snapshot glimpses. It amounts to a powerful and intimate portrait of male identity in the modern world and a biting critique of fractured society.

Szalay has undoubtedly written what will become an iconic testimony of post-Brexit European identity. Shining a light on how modern masculinity is moulded, tested and constrained by issues of nationalism and fundamental economic and political transition.

Nine men, nine very different stories, one extraordinary novel.