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Travelling in a Strange Land (Paperback)
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Travelling in a Strange Land (Paperback)

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£9.99
Paperback 176 Pages
Published: 15/11/2018
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Waterstones Irish Book of the Month for October 2018

'A tense, tense, thrilling, strange and profoundly moving study of parenthood. There isn't a wasted syllable in this short, beautiful book' - Donal Ryan, The Irish Times

The world is shrouded in snow. With transport ground to a halt, Tom must venture out into a transformed and treacherous landscape to collect his son, sick and stranded in student lodgings. But on this solitary drive from Belfast to Sunderland, Tom will be drawn into another journey, one without map or guide, and is forced to chart pathways of family history haunted by memory and clouded in regret.

Travelling in a Strange Land is a work of exquisite loss and transformative grace. It is a novel about fathers and sons, grief, memory, family and love; about the gulfs that lie between us and those we love, and the wrong turns that we take on our way to find them.

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
ISBN: 9781408892756
Number of pages: 176
Weight: 130 g
Dimensions: 198 x 129 mm


MEDIA REVIEWS

Breathtaking ... A dark secret and a frozen journey through the fraught terrain of parenthood drive this brave, exhilarating novel … Every sentence in Parks’s book is felt. The author has weighed up each word and considered every image, electing only those that carry sufficient freight to bear the reader to his intended destination Park takes this emotional terrain of parenthood as both his setting and his subject, and creates something exhilaratingly brave and powerful from its jagged peaks and troughs - Claire Kilroy, Guardian

Another beautiful offering from Northern Ireland is David Park’s Travelling in a Strange Land, though I accept that it’ll make my giftees cry buckets - Lisa McInerney, Irish Times, Books of the Year

David Park’s Travelling in a Strange Land was a beautiful, intensely human study of fathers and sons that I’d gladly share - Brian McGilloway, Irish Times, Books of the Year

This lucidly written and deceptively simple narrative by the highly regarded Northern Irish novelist David Park is the story of a troubled journey into the self and out into the world again, towards some glimmer of generosity and redemption - Sunday Times

A tense, tense, thrilling, strange and profoundly moving study of parenthood. There isn’t a wasted syllable in this short, beautiful book - Donal Ryan, Irish Times

Moving and eloquent - stays with you long after the final pages have melted away - Donal O'Donoghue

Sombre, but unsolemn, with a redemptive, tingling finale, this is a small book bursting with big emotions - Anthony Cummins, Daily Mail

A deeply felt novel … of personal tragedy and failure … There is no false piety in this sometimes desperate, always measured novel, but a compassionately observed, manifestly flawed redemption - Irish Times

It is time to call David Park what he is - a very great writer. Travelling In A Strange Land is an eruption of love and sorrow, overwhelmingly compassionate and wise, hearing the heart break and maybe even heal, bearing the deepest testimony to the love, unending love, binding parent and child. A mighty book - Frank McGuinness

An extraordinary novel, at once startling and quietly brilliant. David Park is a one of Ireland's great novelists and this is, perhaps, his best - Roddy Doyle

This is a father and son novel of rare intensity. We are taken on an unforgettable winter journey and, like in a skid, we have no idea which way we’ll be facing by the end. He writes with a focus and precision which wrings the heart - Bernard MacLaverty

I just loved the David Park. Everything about it. It's just a profound and beautifully sad work and if you want to know what great writing is, it's right there - Niall MacMonagle

This, then, is the story of a lost child and a parent’s guilt about decisions that seemed justifiable at the time but that merely led the way to irreversible tragedy, about the search for redemption … Its concerns are firmly on one man and his search for meaning and solace - Irish Independent

Extraordinary ... As raw and moving a chronicle of pain and powerlessness as could be written. Beautiful, too - Lisa McInerney

David Park is now one of the best British novelists. He’s perfected his art. His new book qualifies him as the Belfast Turgenev ... One of the truest observers of life … he is even more compelling on his favourite subject, the delicate balance which ties, and taunts, fathers and sons. This touching story of a ruminating father’s solitary journey to Scotland to bring home his sick son for Christmas is one of his best yet. It has all of Park’s magic, melancholy and tenderness, and is, in more ways than one, an absolute dream - Big Issue

Park appears to write effortlessly, with one foot planted firmly in the canon of traditional Irish lyricism and another flirting with modern parlance … His emotional intelligence is remarkable - Daily Mail

A writer’s writer … Park is to be commended for his great skill with language and emotion - John Boyne

One of the shrewdest observers of the way we live now - Independent

He is an astute storyteller whose vision is sustained by instinct, intelligent observation, and a sense of responsibility - Irish Times

If there were any justice in the world this slim novel would be on everybody’s Christmas list ... A short, intimate book with a big story to tell - Herald, Books of the Year 2018

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Rob

“Beautiful and lyrical”

Sometimes you read a book and the affect it has on you is one of sheer astonishment...astonishment that the written word can be so powerful, so all consuming. David Park is one of the few authors who has the ability... More

Hardback edition
Helpful? Upvote 14

“Powerful Little Book”

I enjoyed this my first David Park novel.
A father makes a long journey in the snow to pick up his ill son and bring him home from University for Christmas, but this is a journey within a journey. It is also a... More

Hardback edition
Helpful? Upvote 13

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