David Vann was born in the Aleutian Islands and spent his childhood in Ketchikan, Alaska. He is the author of the international bestseller Legend of a Suicide – which has been translated into eighteen languages and won several prizes including the Prix Medicis Etranger – Caribou Island, Dirt, Goat Mountain and Aquarium. He is also the author of two bestselling non-fiction books, and has written for Atlantic Monthly, Esquire, the Sunday Times, Guardian, Sunday Telegraph, Financial Times and other magazines and newspapers.
This Medea is intelligent and cynical, slighted by a husband and
her gender. She is a woman who craves revenge for the fate of being
born a woman and thus rendered powerless in a world ruled by men.
Vann strips away the softer parts of Medea’s character as
ruthlessly as Medea slits throats ... The centrepiece of Bright Air
Black is the butchering of Pelias, a long and magnificently
gruesome scene, described in stomach-churning detail ... Vann
leaves us with the troubling paradox that murderous Medea is also a
devoted mother ... Vann evokes this visceral, sensual, brutal world
of warring city states, capricious gods and fragile human agency in
a fractured prose style, reminiscent of ancient Greek drama and
poetry. Short poetic phrases pile up, fall away, stop short.
Powerful internal rhythms build and subside, like the waves the
Argonauts sail over ... The time and the place may be very
different from his previous novels, but Bright Air Black shares the
same central structure of a searing family drama set against a
backdrop of untamed nature … At the heart of this ambitious,
dazzling, disturbing and memorable novel lies the uneasy
juxtaposing of the wild and the civilised, and the complex,
shifting relationship between the two.
*Financial Times*
[Vann’s] genius lies in his ability to blow away all the elegance
and toga-clad politeness that have grown like a crust around our
idea of ancient Greece and to reveal the bare bones of the Archaic
period in all their bloody, reeking nastiness.
*The Times*
Bright Air Black is a poetic fever dream, beautiful and
unflinchingly primal. A vivid and forceful retelling of Medea’s
famous story.
*Madeline Miller, author of 'The Song of Achilles'*
[David Vann] allows Medea to devour him and his readers: to read
his book is to be swallowed down into her mad mind … Her wonder at
the sea, and the way its water buoys her up, prompts a beautiful
passage … Vann is indebted to poets, and he grants himself great
poetic licence in his handling of syntax … Vivid, often appalling,
sometimes piercingly sad and frequently striking.
*New Statesman*
A retelling of an ancient tale, a retouched portrait of one of
mythology’s most enthralling and notorious women, Medea … (Vann)
gives us a ringside seat to a blood-soaked, viscera-dripping
gore-fest. Vann gives us a fresh slant on an early myth, an
up-close and in-depth character study. From the outset, his drama
unfolds in prose that is both atmospheric and electrifying … Vann’s
content can be grim but his language has beauty and poise … [A]
stunning depiction of one of mythology’s most complex characters …
The tale is also one of great power and intensity. Bright Air Black
possesses the same potency. Its dark energy shocks us and shakes
us, yet it is impossible to pull away.
*The Australian*
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