Winner of the Man Booker Prize 2018
Winner ofthe Orwell Prize for Political Fiction 2019
Shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2019
Shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize 2019
Waterstones Irish Book of the Month for January 2019
'As a brilliantly realised extended metaphor for a totalitarian state it could be anywhere from Stasi-riddled East Germany,to Chile under Pinochet's dictatorship to Salazar's Portugal.'- New Statesman
Anyone seeking evidence toward the buoyant health of Irish writing need look no further than Anna Burns'triumphant Man Booker Prize victory for Milkman.
Joining a very select group of Booker-winning Irish authors (including Anne Enright,Roddy Doyle and Iris Murdoch),Burns'often amusing - but ultimately deeply disquieting - satire of the Troubles proved a hit with our customers long before the winner's announcement.
At the book's heart,a teenager - whose only means of escape is literature - is slowly ground down by the unwanted attentions and creeping psychopathy of a paramilitary many years her senior. This is the secret state,a place where gossip and hearsay are weaponised methods of control,contained in a novel written with both a sad humour and a certain kind of fury.
Eschewing mention of Belfast and cloaking every character in nameless anonymity,this is contemporary history rewritten as dystopia,where power and fear are wrought by rumour and half-truth.'It's a novel,'remarked an astute Irish Times,'about failing to remember and failing to forget; failing to speak and failing to remain silent.'
Publisher: Faber & FaberISBN: 9780571338757Number of pages: 368Weight: 304 gDimensions: 198 x 129 x 22 mmEdition: Main
MEDIA REVIEWS
'The narrator of Milkman disrupts the status quo not through being political,heroic or violently opposed,but because she is original,funny,disarmingly oblique and unique: different.'-The Guardian
'From the outset,Milkman is delivered in a breathless,hectic,glorious torrent. The pace doesn't let up for a single moment.... Milkman can sometimes feel like a nerve-jangling reading experience; exhausting,even. Yet those who stick with Ann Burns'hectic,stream-of-consciousness writing,not dissimilar to that of Eimear McBride or Flann O'Brien,are more than rewarded. Her writing has been described as point-blank poetry,and rightly so. Her grasp on Middle sister's voice is so confident,and the textures of the environment,with its politics both big and small,are a thing to behold. It's an astute,exquisite account of Northern Ireland's social landscape,but Milkman is much more than that,too. It's also a coming-of-age story with flecks of dark humour,yet at other points it's a damning portrait of rape culture,and how women are often regarded in communities like this one. Because of this,Milkman is a potent and urgent book,with more than a hint of barely contained fury.'-The Irish Independent
'Anna Burns is part of a movement of new and established female Belfast writers... along with Lucy Caldwell,Rois n O'Donnell,Jan Carson and others. Milkman is both a story of Belfast and its particular sins but it is also a story of anywhere. It reminded me of China Mieville's The City and the City where identity,names and seeing the Other are contentious acts. Milkman shares this level of ambition; it is an impressive,wordy,often funny book and confirms Anna Burns as one of our rising literary stars.'-The Irish Times
Anna Burns
Anna Burns is a Northern Irish author,best known for her Booker Prize-winning novel Milkman.
Visit the Anna Burns author page
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