In these elegant, unsparing and intimate stories, the Folio Prize-winning author, Akhil Sharma, exposes the paradoxes, ironies and harmonies that characterise modern life. Marrying the minimalism of Chekhov and Carver with a flair for dark comedy, A Life of Adventure and Delight is a collection full of wisdom, wonder and reflection.
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These beautiful, funny, intelligent short stories are told with such apparent simplicity ... The simplicity is Sharma's effort to get past all the temptations of falsity, of false style and ready-made ideas. His writing shines its clean light, never mercilessly or voyeuristically, on these characters winding round and round inside the muddled opacity of their lives and their thoughts. They, as well as the writer, struggle for the truth ... Yet their vision is comic too, in the broadest, Chekhovian sense: robust and warm and ironic, not overwrought. The genius lies in the detail, in the gritty comical solidity of real things. (Tessa Hadley The Guardian)
This slippery tone - at once amused and critical, resigned and outraged - infuses each of these eight haunting, revelatory stories ... bracingly direct, unassuming language ... boldly forthright and probing, [he] brings a keen cultural awareness to each of these stories ... It's a testament to the author's sensitive eye for human foibles that these characters are not only palatable but relatable, and this feat of empathy makes the implicit critique sting even more ... Perceptive, humane and pointed ... (Adrian Tomine New York Times Book Review)
Sharma's ample talent and focus on technical literary achievement are on full display here.
A keen Hemingway student, he has achieved commendable lucidity in his prose, making a conscious effort to free the narrative from weighty metaphors or descriptions of sense, smell or feel. In fact, he seems to be writing from a distance, as if wielding a very long nib, with each sentence a clean, measured stroke. That enables him to keep an even, if at times impersonal, voice that neither rises in anger nor quivers in sadness. Of the eight tales in this collection, "Surrounded by Sleep" stands out for its irony, its understated sadness and long shadows.
Sharma's ample talent and focus on technical literary achievement are on full display here.
A keen Hemingway student, he has achieved commendable lucidity in his prose, making a conscious effort to free the narrative from weighty metaphors or descriptions of sense, smell or feel. In fact, he seems to be writing from a distance, as if wielding a very long nib, with each sentence a clean, measured stroke. That enables him to keep an even, if at times impersonal, voice that neither rises in anger nor quivers in sadness. Of the eight tales in this collection, "Surrounded by Sleep" stands out for its irony, its understated sadness and long shadows.
(Financial Times)'He is truly the Chekhov of our time.' - Yiyun Li
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