Beyond the Sea: From the winner of the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year Award, 2018

Description

When fishermen Bolivar and Hector set sail from their South American village, they soon find themselves cast adrift in the Pacific Ocean by a sudden storm. As the days pass and no rescue materialises, the two men must come to terms with each other, and with their environment, if they are to survive. Part gripping survival story, part fearless existential parable, Beyond the Sea is a meditation on what it means to be a man, a friend, a father and a sinner in our fallen world, a powerful and redemptive novel from a master of lyrical prose.

Paul Lynch is the author of the novels Red Sky in Morning, The Black Snow and Grace. He won the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year 2018 for his third novel, Grace, which was also shortlisted for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction & the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing 2018. The Black Snow won France's Prix Libr'a Nous for Best Foreign Novel, and was a finalist for the Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger (Best Foreign Book Prize). He lives in Dublin with his wife and daughter. His website is www.paullynchwriter.com

'Lynch demonstrates a control over his ideas that comes from a pure lyrical telling, a speech act that, if you let it, will take you anywhere. Beyond the Sea is frightening but beautiful.' * Guardian * '[Lynch's] novels are artistic creations...this absorbing book is an evocative one...His fourth novel has echoes of Melville, Dostoyevsky and William Golding...But the literary work it most invokes is Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.' * Sunday Times * 'Such an aching sense of spaciousness feels in the spirit of its exotic setting, of Latin American sensualists such as Paulo Coelho or Pablo Neruda, or the deep eastern wisdoms of Hermann Hesse... Beyond the Sea deserves a special place in Lynch's increasingly fascinating and diverse catalogue.' * Irish Independent * 'Lynch has mastered the art of capturing his characters' anguish, and there is an enigmatic lyricism to his storytelling... The story is fantastically written, a truly magnificent portrayal of the gritty battle between despair and hope.' * RTE * 'A lucid, lyrical tale of two lost men... The language attains a poetic intensity that is unusual and well earned.' * Irish Times * 'Paul Lynch won the Irish Novel of the Year 2018 for Grace, a lushly lyrical adventure story set in Famine-era Ireland. His follow-up...[is] a short but absorbing tale of the lengths to which people go to avoid admitting who they really are.' * Metro * 'Masterly.' * Sebastian Barry, author of Days Without End * 'I finished this exquisite, meticulous, powerful novel...this afternoon. A fisherman and a youth adrift on the Pacific in a fishing boat. Nothing & everything happens, often at the same time. And what a stylist.' -- David Mitchell, author of Cloud Atlas 'Brutal and poetic... Alive with elegance and insight.' * TLS * 'Blew me away...a beautifully written and tightly controlled novel about the human spirit and what happens when it is pushed to the limit.' * Christine Dwyer Hickey, author of The Narrow Land * '[This] stark, mesmerizing book reads like an existential argument between [life's] irreconcilable truths, a Beckett play bobbing in the open water...this fine book contains multitudes of experience.' * Wall Street Journal * 'The writing is vivid...conveying the claustrophobic reality of confinement in a small vessel.' * Irish Examiner * 'As good as anything I've read in recent memory.' * Rob Doyle, author of Threshold * 'Richly imagined...[has] the timeless aura and allegorical undertones of an ancient Greek myth...This is a book that will leave you feeling thoroughly wrung out by the final page, but also happy to be alive.' * The Scotsman * 'Combining the sensibilities of a Joseph Conrad or a Cormac McCarthy with the poetic intensity of an Emily Dickinson, this rich, raw, and powerful seascape by Paul Lynch throws the sea's storms and the sea's light into the darkest corners of human consciousness. An astonishing achievement.' * Jane Urquhart, author of The Night Stages * 'Lynch manages to transform a news story into a universal tale of friendship and endurance and love... Beyond the Sea is elemental. It is a story sliced to the bone. It compels the reader to look unblinkingly at matters of life and death, at the heart of what it means to be fully human.' * New York Journal of Books * 'A powerful, heart-breaking story of friendship forged in the most extreme conditions. With its echoes of Greek myth, it yields up those small moments of grace that are deeply transformative.' * Mary Costello, author of Academy Street * 'A novelist with the eye and the ear and the heart of an absolute master. Paul Lynch is peerless.' * Donal Ryan, author of From a Low and Quiet Sea * 'Thrillingly stripped-back prose composed of simple, declarative sentences...viscerally captures Bolivar's physical and spiritual transformation.' * The Australian * 'Paul Lynch is one of our greatest writers, and Beyond the Sea is his best work yet. A sublime, elemental, fever dream of a novel that constantly tests us, tempts us, and guides us. This is a work of art that relentlessly and slyly captures not only the trials of the human spirit, but what we are doing to our environment, our world, and to each other - a profound, unforgettable journey, one I urge you to experience.' * Paul Yoon, author of The Mountain * 'With echoes of Camus, McCarthy, Hemingway, and Coleridge, Lynch illustrates the reciprocally indifferent relationship between humanity and its environment, while subtly highlighting the same indifference between humans. The author of Grace (my favourite novel of 2017) presents a harrowing, yet redemptive tale of spiritual purgation delivered with poetic and deeply evocative prose.' * Readings (Australia) * 'Shadows of Hemingway, even Graham Greene?... [There are] more than enough questions, prompted by Lynch's narrative, to keep people thinking and reading.' * Otago Daily Times *