★授權英、美、加、法、德、荷、挪、義、匈、俄、土、韓、中簡（pending）！
★2016年《紐約時報》百大注目好書
★2016年《衛報》年度小說選書；《美的線條》《陌生人的孩子》作者Alan Hollinghurst年度選書
★2016年曼布克獎決選作
★《金融時報》夏季選書
★2016年普林頓小說獎（The Plimpton Prize for Fiction）得主
★2016年戈登伯恩文學獎（Gordon Burn Prize）得主
★作者David Szalay於2013年榮登權威文學雜誌《Granta》每十年公布一次的「20位最佳英國青年小說家」名單

《男人啊》（All That Man Is）描述九位分處不同生命階段的男人，每一位都離家在外，在布拉格城郊，在比利時的高速公路旁，在過度開發的阿爾卑斯山村落，在塞普勒斯的廉價旅館，每一位都在迷惘、困頓中試著理解此時此刻活著的意義。全書看似九個短篇，經由作者的寫實銳筆交織成一幅大膽深刻的當代生活圖像。

從退伍軍人勞工到浮誇大學生，從中年失意男到俄羅斯寡頭，次序越後的章節，主角年齡越長，天氣也越寒冷，從青春年華到遲暮之冬，情節與結構呼應著人生風景的更迭。作者好整以暇但毫不留情地以一針見血的心理描寫透視這些男人——荒唐的，可鄙的，令人震驚的，生氣勃勃的，可憐的，詼諧的，但無不充斥真誠的渴望，在歲月的無情追趕下，越發不可思議地孤注一擲。

《男人啊》構思精巧，筆調時而幽暗哀傷，時而荒誕幽默，充滿機智的細節與令人心碎的情感。九個男人的故事既觀照單獨個人遭遇，亦探索社會群體的複雜，道盡二十一世紀男性的存在處境。

 

David Szalay is the author of three previous novels: Spring, The Innocent and London and the South-East, for which he was awarded the Betty Trask and Geoffrey Faber Memorial prizes. Raised in London, he has lived in Canada and Belgium, and is now based in Budapest. In 2013 he was named as one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists.

 

“Without exception, the stories─subtle, seductive, poignant, humorous─bear witness to the alienation, self-doubt, and fragmentation of contemporary life; each succeeds on its own while complementing the others. Szalay’s riveting prose and his consummate command of structure illuminate the individual while exploring society’s unsettling complexity. In 2013, Szalay was named as one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists. This effort exceeds even that lofty expectation.”─Publishers Weekly, starred review

“A tightly woven, precisely observed novel in stories. . . . The book's conceit is imaginative, its architecture impressive. . . . Szalay writes with subtlety and pathos about these flawed and floundering figures. . . . A grim but compelling composite portrait by a talented writer.”─Kirkus Reviews

“[David Szalay] is capable of conjuring tenderness from any situation. . . . [Readers] will find a great deal to enjoy in these pages, and further evidence that Szalay. . . is one of the best fortysomething writers we have.”─The Guardian (UK)

“Cleverly conceived, authoritative, timely and (in a good way) crushing. . . . There is a cheerful and ghastly sordidness to everything, and Szalay’s prose with its ruthlessly banal dialogue, arm-twisting present tense, shard-like fragments, and every other page or so an irresistibly brilliant epithet or startlingly quotable phrase, lets nothing go to waste.”─London Review of Books (UK)

“Nobody captures the super-sadness of modern Europe as well as Szalay. . . . The predicaments of the various tormented men come together to produce a rich exploration of male vulnerability. . . . With All That Man Is, [Szalay] emerges as a writer with a voice unlike any other.”─The Spectator (UK)

“Original, piercingly acute and disturbingly, viscerally elegiac.”─William Boyd