A Shout in the Ruins

Description

Following his hugely celebrated debut novel, THE YELLOW BIRDS, Kevin Powers returns to the battlefield and its aftermath, this time in his native Virginia, just before and during the Civil War and ninety years later. The novel pinpoints with unerring emotional depth the nature of random violence, the necessity of love and compassion, and the fragility and preciousness of life. It will endure as a stunning novel about what we leave behind, what a life is worth, what is said and unsaid, and the fact that ultimately what will survive of sus is love.

Kevin Powers was born and raised in Richmond, Virginia. A former soldier who served with the US army in Iraq in 2004-5, he studied English at Virginia Commonwealth University after his honorable discharge and received an MFA in Poetry from the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin. His debut novel, The Yellow Birds, won the Guardian First book Award, the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award, and was a finalist for the National Book Award. His first collection of poetry, Letter Composed During a Lull in the Fighting, was published in 2014 and was shortlisted for both the TS Eliot Prize and the Forward Prize.

PRAISE FOR THE YELLOW BIRDS: Extraordinary . . . beautifully accomplished. The mark of an artist of the first order . . . a must-read book. - Guardian A masterpiece . . . a classic. - The Times Books of the Year A stunning achievement - visceral poignant. - Sunday Times Remarkable for its intensity of both feeling and expression. In this book about death, every line is a defiant assertion of the power of beauty to revivify, whether beauty shows itself in nature or (later) in art. - Guardian Books of the Year A wonderful, powerful novel that moves and terrifies. - Independent Harrowing, inexplicably beautiful, and utterly, urgently necessary. - Ann Patchett Kevin Powers has conjured a poetic and devastating account of war's effect on the individual - Damian Lewis Written with an intensity which is deeply compelling - Colm Toibin