Milkman: A Novel [Paperback]

Winner of the Man Booker Prize

Everything about this novel rings true. . . . Original, funny, disarmingly oblique and unique.The Guardian

In an unnamed city, middle sister stands out for the wrong reasons. She reads while walking, for one. And she has been taking French night classes downtown. So when a local paramilitary known as the milkman begins pursuing her, she suddenly becomes interesting, the last thing she ever wanted to be. Despite middle sisters attempts to avoid himand to keep her mother from finding out about her maybe-boyfriendrumors spread and the threat of violence lingers.Milkmanis a story of the way inaction can have enormous repercussions, in a time when the wrong flag, wrong religion, or even a sunset can be subversive. Told with ferocious energy and sly, wicked humor,Milkmanestablishes Anna Burns as one of the most consequential voices of our day.

[Milkman] seeth[es] with black humor and adolescent anger at the adult world and its brutal absurdities. . . . For a novel about life under multifarious forms of totalitarian controlpolitical, gendered, sectarian, communalMilkmancan be charmingly wry.The New Yorker

Brutally intelligent. . . . At its core,Milkmanis [a] wildly good and true novel of how living in fear limits people.NPR.org

Milkmanvibrates with the anxieties of our own era, from terrorism to sexual harassment to the blinding divisions that make reconciliation feel impossible. . . . Its as though the intense pressure of this place has compressed the elements of comedy and horror to produce lĂ`