Overview

* Chicago Tribune ""Fall literary preview: books you need to read now"" * Vulture ""The Best and Biggest Books to Read This Fall"" * The Guardian ""A best book of 2019"" After moving with his wife and two children to a smallholding in Ireland, Paul Kingsnorth expects to find contentment. It is the goal he has sought -- to nest, to find home -- after years of rootlessness as an environmental activist and author. Instead he finds that his tools as a writer are failing him, calling into question his foundational beliefs about language and setting him at odds with culture itself. Informed by his experiences with indigenous peoples, the writings of D.H. Lawrence and Annie Dillard, and the day-to-day travails of farming his own land, Savage Gods asks: what does it mean to belong? What sacrifices must be made in order to truly inhabit a life? And can words ever paint the truth of the world -- or are they part of the great lie which is killing it?

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9781937512859

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A furiously gifted writer. --The Washington Post Kingsnorth's is a voice worth listening to. --Kirkus Reviews Paul Kingsnorth's books have such a profound affect on me that I always feel I must make them into a play or a film or something after reading them. In a world of such confusing news and opinion, I always find a story in Paul's writing that leads me to an authentic place in the world. --Mark Rylance Kingsnorth is becoming an existential David Mitchell. --Boris Kachka, Vulture Paul Kingsnorth has always held my attention, and at times completely astounded me with his varied and vital writing talent. This spectacular little volume is a book all about that writing talent, but discussions of process and craft are secondary to a more ontological exploration of what writing really is... and what it very much isn't. We see the art form through Kingsnorth's personal prism, and he slowly invites us in to ponder both the freedom and stricture that come with the endeavor to turn human language into the written word. --Mark Schultz, Carmichael's Bookstore (Louisville, Kentucky) An enigma of a book, Savage Gods takes a long hard look at the creative process of writing as well as deep, philosophical questions of purpose, place, and belonging. Kingsnorth wrestles with his prose and the whole idea of attaching words to lived experiences; questioning his choices and impulses at every turn. Purposefully meandering, deeply personal, and playfully existential, Savage Gods asks page after page, What the hell is the point of all of this? Kingsnorth doesn't provide easy answers, but he has written an essential companion to anyone who creates or takes pen to paper. A unique, bleak and yet uplifting work; honest in a way few books ever are. --Caleb Masters, Bookmarks (Winston-Salem, North Carolina) Paul Kingsnorth is one of my favorite writers and thinkers out there today. In Savage Gods, his deeply personal musings on writing and its value (or even relevance) in the face of global and environmental crises are heartfelt and thought-provoking. He puts on the page concerns I have found myself facing regularly with my own work--why even bother? The manner in which he delivers these thoughts in the book, very straightforward, and clearly present and not over-written, are honest and heartfelt. I read the electronic ARC of this one, and can't wait to get my hands on a finished, physical copy to keep close for future returns-to. Maybe what we do as writers is just tossing deck chairs off the Titanic, as the saying goes, but I hope Kingsnorth doesn't stop. --Chris La Tray, Fact & Fiction Bookstore (Missoula, Montana)

A furiously gifted writer. --The Washington Post Kingsnorth is becoming an existential David Mitchell. --Vulture

Author Information

Paul Kingsnorth is the author of Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist, Beast and The Wake, which was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. He is cofounder of the Dark Mountain Project, a global network of writers, artists, and thinkers in search of new stories for a world on the brink

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