Nick Laird was born in Northern Ireland and studied at Cambridge and Harvard. He has published two novels, Utterly Monkey and Glover’s Mistake, and three collections of poetry, To a Fault, On Purpose, and Go Giants. He is the recipient of many awards for his fiction and poetry, including the Betty Trask Prize, the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, and the Somerset Maugham Award. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a 2016 Guggenheim Fellow, he teaches in the creative writing program at New York University.
“Laird dazzles eye and ear with his kinetic prose . . . with a mere
flick of description, [he] summons vast stretches of politics and
history . . . the dynamism Laird has conjured in New Ulster keeps
us reading, and the tragic climax resonates powerfully with the
Northern Ireland sections of the novel.” –Jennifer Egan, The New
York Times Book Review
“Takes off like a shot and pierces the lives of two Irish
sisters.” —Vanity Fair
“Society’s darkest impulses are on graphic display in Laird’s novel
. . . [he] is alive to the way that moral certitudes tend toward
violence.” –The Wall Street Journal
“In his new book, Laird sets out to mix the intimate family drama
with the epic novel of ideas . . . full of bull’s-eye sentences and
sharply drawn characters . . . Laird handles it all with tremendous
dexterity, energy, and compassion.” – The Sunday Times (U.K.)
“A richly textured geography of the human need to believe in
something, and of the stories, religious and secular, that we live
by . . . has a grave, melancholy grace.” – The Guardian (U.K.)
“[A] roving, ambitious novel…. The taut prose propels the story and
describes the process by which people ‘make a future by entering
into ethical relations with the past.’”--The New Yorker
“[Nick Laird] weaves a wide-ranging, globetrotting novel in which
two sisters contend with issues of identity, politics, and belief.”
–The Philadelphia Inquirer
“An agile domestic drama, split between Ireland and Papua New
Guinea . . . [Laird] effortlessly switches location and point of
view without sacrificing the empathy we feel for each
character.”
– The Christian Science Monitor
"Nick Laird's prose disseminates unease -- a sure sign of
originality. The aura of danger derives not so much from his theme
(how religious faith is inseparable from violence) as from his
sensibility: the reader feels the ever-present likelihood -- the
risk -- of confrontation with unpalatable truths. Laird is a
poet-novelist; his fictional world may be harsh and raw, but it is
balanced by the imaginative habits of a poet, which always tend
towards forgiveness and, indeed, towards celebration."
--Martin Amis, bestselling author of The Zone of Interest
"In Modern Gods, Nick Laird takes two experiences poles apart and
unites them in gorgeous language, with the same fierce tenderness
as he employs in his poetry. It’s about families, tribes, peoples –
and if you’re a member of any of those you’ll find a home both
strange and familiar in this story."
— Dave Eggers, author of Heroes of the Frontier and A Hologram for
the King
“Modern Gods has realer-than-real characters, unexpected turns of
plot into unknown corners of the world, and language that finds its
way through the darkest moments and states of mind to shine its
clear bright light, revelatory and unforgiving. And it encompasses
deep--the deepest, thorniest--questions of faith and redemption,
fate and forgiveness.”
—Michael Chabon, bestselling author of Moonglow
“Nick Laird knows a great deal about violence, physical, emotional
and spiritual, and of how it eats into the lives both of survivors
and perpetrators, and continues to corrode, like a slow-acting
acid. Modern Gods is a big, tightly-packed book that
lives up amply to its high ambitions."
– John Banville, Man Booker Prize-winning author of The Sea
“Modern Gods is at once remorselessly clear-eyed about human
frailty in the aggregate and full of loving kindness for human
beings as individuals. The taut prose reveals a poet’s hand, and
the dialogue a playwright’s ear; Laird can nail an entire character
in one acutely perceptive description, and he channels Amis in
richly-suggestive transitions that crystallize the truths of
well-wrought scenes. Ferociously intelligent, radically
contemporary, deeply affecting, stunning.”
—Matthew Thomas, bestselling author of We Are Not Ourselves
"Laird has the rare ability to mate tragedy and comedy in a single
line without making either side feel cheap for it. And it's that
same contagious wit, displayed so mightily in his poems, that
enlivens his fiction." --Interview Magazine
“[An] intimate and searing look at the aftereffects of violent
conflict and religious fanaticism . . . Finely etched, impeccably
structured, Modern Gods has the enduring echoes of a
classic.” –BBC.com
“Domestic drama, adventure travelogue and political thriller meet
in this dazzling saga by Laird, a poet and novelist.” – Huffington
Post
“A truly superb novel exploring the possibilities and
impossibilities of forgiveness.” – Publishers Weekly
“In this evocative and psychologically profound novel, both
sisters, at home and far afield, confront the possibility that the
beliefs they have carefully built up for themselves may be
hollow.” – ALA Booklist
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