WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD
Winner of the Dublin Impac International Prize
Winner of Best Foreign Novel Award Weshanhu Award
Winner of the Grinzane Award
Winner of the Prix Deauville
Winner of the Ambassador Book Award
Winner of the Medici Book Club Prize
Winner of the Aspen Literary Prize
'A wow of a novel — rich, humane, brilliantly written and as deep as it is wide' The Times
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New York, August 1974: a man is walking in the sky. Between the newly built Twin Towers, the man twirls through the air. Far below, the lives of complete strangers spin towards each other: Corrigan, a radical Irish monk working in the Bronx; Claire, a delicate Upper East Side housewife reeling from the death of her son; Lara, a drug-addled young artist; Gloria, solid and proud despite decades of hardship; Tillie, a hooker who used to dream of a better life; and Jazzlyn, her beautiful daughter raised on promises that reach beyond the skyline of New York.
In the shadow of one reckless and beautiful act, these disparate lives will collide, and be transformed for ever.
'A glorious, thumping tale of intersecting lives, told in a language that all but sings' Kamila Shamsie
'One of the most electric, profound novels I have read in years … an emotional tour de force' New York Times
'McCann has reinvented the city of New York in all its breathing, fighting, whining, joyous clamour' Peter Carey, Observer
They were his own incantations, mostly indecipherable to me, with odd little cackles of laughter and long sighs.
Coming to the city was like entering a tunnel, he said, and finding to your surprise that the light at the end didn’t matter; sometimes in fact the tunnel made the light tolerable.
