FREE Returns

FREE delivery Monday, December 19. Details

Or fastest delivery Sunday, December 18. Order within 5 hrs 13 mins. Details

Arrives before Christmas

Only 1 left in stock.

As an alternative, the Kindle eBook is available now and can be read on any device with the free Kindle app. Want to listen? Try Audible.

[{"displayPrice":"£16.95","priceAmount":16.95,"currencySymbol":"£","integerValue":"16","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"95","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"UzvhQeSTH%2BhWcH5nxt7udtAz6vYK9vZKPBRgxLAfMuRz7tfwb0trA7%2B8T79lZZCtiLuPDiyIrjH9YLRI%2BtG6LLQooyDmepJnFXC3UWO4bfoN5ccWmzr4ZOSzRXhaTqvRU29BTnIqa4amOTYARywGJ5Hbi1wtAF5KnvV84MoafUzy2U3EexZApa5kMpchRtsP","locale":"en-GB","buyingOptionType":"NEW"},{"displayPrice":"£3.47","priceAmount":3.47,"currencySymbol":"£","integerValue":"3","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"47","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"rH0ZSBGg3b1EqXr5h0nKdf5tp0QiYAjfONVkV7Ls87navQWNsWrUcSfkUS94qecU%2BScWBn2TwJWGKdQVhhOklUWns41n1%2BGiCNNOtUPD8uJ2Gps6iFHvSW7VGLEx3C6Mve%2F00uAjkuyUCl1bxyoLfYl4fK8HmwlzlJ1M63nxPSLwLAl2Y%2F3nOL0pE9UCmhlU","locale":"en-GB","buyingOptionType":"USED"}]

££16.95 () Includes selected options. Includes initial monthly payment and selected options. Details

Secure transaction

Dispatches from

Amazon

Sold by

Karadoli

Details

Dispatches from

Amazon

Sold by

Karadoli

Return policy: Returnable until Jan 31, 2023

Add gift options

FREE delivery December 28 - 30. Details

Arrives after Christmas. Need a gift sooner? Send an Amazon Gift Card instantly by email or SMS.

Select delivery location

Used: Very Good | Details

Sold by The Cotswold Library

Share <Embed>

Have one to sell?

Sell on Amazon

Flip to back Flip to front

Listen Playing... Paused You're listening to a sample of the Audible audio edition.
Learn more

See all 7 images

Follow the author

David Szalay

All That Man Is: Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2016 Hardcover – 7 April 2016

by David Szalay (Author)

427 ratings

See all formats and editions

Amazon Price

New from

Used from

Kindle Edition

"Please retry"

£4.99

—

Audible Audiobooks, Unabridged

"Please retry"

£0.00

Free with your Audible trial

Hardcover

"Please retry"

£18.48

£12.74

£10.53

Hardcover, 7 April 2016

£16.95

£0.80

Paperback

"Please retry"

£8.99

£5.69

£0.90

Note: This item is eligible for FREE Click and Collect without a minimum order subject to availability. Details

Enhance your purchase

A Spectator / New Statesman / Daily Telegraph / Guardian / Times Literary Supplement / Observer Book of the Year

SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2016 MAN BOOKER PRIZE
Winner of the 2016 Gordon Burn Prize

Nine men. Each of them at a different stage of life, each of them away from home, and each of them striving – in the suburbs of Prague, beside a Belgian motorway, in a cheap Cypriot hotel – to understand just what it means to be alive, here and now.

Tracing an arc from the spring of youth to the winter of old age, All That Man Is brings these separate lives together to show us men as they are – ludicrous and inarticulate, shocking and despicable; vital, pitiable, hilarious, and full of heartfelt longing. And as the years chase them down, the stakes become bewilderingly high in this piercing portrayal of 21st-century manhood.

Print length

448 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Jonathan Cape
Publication date

7 April 2016
Dimensions

14.4 x 3.9 x 20.4 cm
ISBN-10

9780224099769
ISBN-13

978-0224099769
See all details

Claire Keegan
6,454
Paperback
13 offers from £6.51
Shehan Karunatilaka
942
Hardcover
20 offers from £11.99
Keri Hulme
306
Paperback
28 offers from £2.19
Robin Robertson
166
Paperback
19 offers from £1.10
Roy Jacobsen
601
Paperback
26 offers from £1.85
Jessica Andrews
416
Paperback
26 offers from £4.27

Product description

Review

All That Man Is... looks increasingly like the masterpiece of British fiction from the past few years. -- David Sexton ― Evening Standard

David Szalay pushed at the fault lines between the novel and short story form in All That Man Is linked tales of European masculinity in crisis, whose effect is monumentally bleak, but which contain some of the best prose to be found in English this year. -- Justine Jordan ― Guardian Books of the Year

Szalay's writing is exact and true and always subtly intelligent; this book is bracing and thrilling and chilling. -- Tessa Hadley

It’s a rare and wonderous event when a novel changes the way you look at the world around you; and this was the case with [All That Man Is]… A worthy winner of the Gordon Burn Prize this year. Gordon Burn would have loved it. Say no more. -- William Boyd ― New Statesman, Book of the Year

There is everything to relish about this intelligent, moving, thoroughly European search for the meaning of life ... It's hard to imagine reading a better book this year. -- Melissa Katsoulis ― Times

This feels like a great novel driven by its overarching theme: what is my life, here and now, all about? ... Rarely has it been so brilliantly and chillingly spelled out. -- John Harding ― Daily Mail

Trains a high-powered microscope on modern life… Szalay might have found in All that Man Is the perfect vehicle for his particular talent… It brings a sensory richness to the bleak and the drab… A showcase for Szalays virtuosic range… Each character is in crisis...yet Szalay grants each a lyrical moment of sensory immersion in the world. It is the resonance of these moments of fleeting transcendence that form the structure of this strange and lucid novel. -- Duncan White ― Daily Telegraph

All That Man Is is a triumph… By the fourth chapter the book as a whole has become gripping… Szalay has harnessed the natural energy of time, and the result is a 100-megawatt novel: intelligent, intricate, so very well made. The form perfectly fitting the content. When I reached the end, I turned straight back to the start to begin again. -- Claire Lowdon ― Sunday Times

[Szalay is] capable of conjuring tenderness from any situation… Szalay keeps the writing so judgment-free and is so honest about the unpredictability of desire… [Readers] will find a great deal to enjoy in these pages, and further evidence that Szalay…is one of the best fortysomething writers we have. -- William Skidelsky ― Observer

Szalay exposes the vulnerability that belies young men’s sexual bravado… Szalay takes us inside distinctive worlds. -- Max Liu ― Independent

Szalay’s writing is always sensitive, often funny and brilliantly observed… This is a very poignant piece of writing… All That Man Is does have the feel of a novel: in its evenness of tone, its thematic coherence, its driving sense of purpose… This is a quietly dazzling book by a writer who thoroughly deserves his growing reputation. -- Toby Lichtig ― Literary Review

He is one of those rare writers with skill in all the disciplines that first-rate fiction requires. The most immediate pleasure is his literary intelligence… Szalay’s writing is virtuosic… These are the best short stories I’ve read for ages. -- Edward Docx ― Guardian

Here is a newish, youngish…contemporary British novelist worth catching up on and following… Luxuriant and Hobbesian… Szalay is an offended satirist with a remarkable verbal imagination… Szalay’s prose with its ruthlessly banal dialogue, arm-twisting present tense, shard-like fragments…irresistibly brilliant epithet or startlingly quotable phrase, lets nothing go to waste. -- Michael Hofmann ― London Review of Books

He exposes with clear-sighted precision the multiple and (largely) disastrous failings of his characters… Szalay is too sharp by far to overstate the inevitable impact of his fellow man's actions… He exposes the problem in such style and with such rigour. -- Gary Kaill ― Skinny

He writes clean, unshowy sentences that move easily between the diction of casual speech and a more distanced tone. And he’s able to hold a reader even when there isn’t much going on, relying on assured storytelling rather than busy plotting. All this means that the new book goes down smoothly. It’s also a bit of a tour de force when it comes to social and geographical reach… It’s part of Szalay’s appeal that he’s more interested in getting at the texture of experience than he is in stuffing it into elegant packaging. -- Christopher Tayler ― Financial Times

He goes to town on nine specimens of the male gender, only surfacing to spit out the bones… The predicaments of the various tormented men come together to produce a rich exploration of male vulnerability… With All That Man Is, Szalay] he emerges as a writer with a voice unlike any other. -- Jude Cook ― Spectator

Szalay’s audacious new novel… A superb meditation on ageing. ― Telegraph

The book is compelling, both for its fine-grained rendering of what one character calls “the texture of existence” and for its intricate patterning of events… His writing pulls you completely into their world. This is a book that I was impatient to return to and regretted finishing -- Chris Power ― New Statesman

A 100-megawatt book. ― Sunday Times

[A] boldly sad-funny and clear-eyed new novel. -- Andrew Motion ― Guardian

Szalay’s handling of this material is sensitive, generous and often accomplished. He is adept at evoking the metaphysical stirrings that accompany shifts in light, time, weather… He is capable of sharp, fresh and affecting perceptions… [All That Man Is] offers enriching moments of immersion in the texture of existence. -- Matthew Adams ― Irish Times

A wonderfully pan-European collection of stories… All are bleakly funny and brilliantly drawn. -- Markie Robson-Soctt ― Tablet

An impressive investigation of masculinity and – with excellent timing – Europe. -- Justine Jordan ― Guardian

Szalay is on the cusp of widespread recognition and acclaim, but it could take the Booker to really tip him in. Szalay’s win would also be a symbolic victory for that generation of writers that seemed to usher in the new millennium by their will and words alone. To put it bluntly, this is the sort of coup that could change the guard of the British literary establishment. ― Culture Trip

[A] wryly funny work. ― Wall Street Journal (Europe)

From the Author

David Szalay is the author of three previous novels: Spring, The Innocent and London and the South-East, for which he was awarded the Betty Trask and Geoffrey Faber Memorial prizes. Raised in London, he has lived in Canada and Belgium, and is now based in Budapest. In 2013 he was named as one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ 0224099760
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Jonathan Cape; 1st edition (7 April 2016)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 448 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9780224099769
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0224099769
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 14.4 x 3.9 x 20.4 cm

Best Sellers Rank: 606,079 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- 48,689 in Literary Fiction (Books)
- 54,097 in Contemporary Fiction (Books)

Customer reviews:
427 ratings

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.

David Szalay

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read author blogs and more

Customer reviews

5 star		47%
4 star		27%
3 star		12%
2 star		9%
1 star		5%

How customer reviews and ratings work

Reviews with images

See all customer images

Top reviews from United Kingdom

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Patsy P

An outstanding book

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 13 December 2022

Verified Purchase

I loved this book so much, I bought another copy to give to a friend. Each chapter tells a story from the point of view of a male character, and as a way of understanding how men really think, I found it hugely insightful. Great stories, excellent writing, one of the best books I've read this year - and I read a huge amount

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 13 December 2022

Verified Purchase

I bought this for a gift.

Helpful

MisterHobgoblin

but I like to think there's more to me

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 17 September 2016

Verified Purchase

All That Man Is appears to be a collection of short stories, each focusing on a male character from one of a variety of European countries who happens to be – or to be going – to a different European country. The lead characters are progressively older in each story, ranging from a British pre-University student behaving badly on an inter-railing trip through to a British grandfather seeing out his final years in the less fashionable part of Italy.

All That Man Is has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize, meaning that someone, somewhere thought this was a novel. I don’t see it myself; there is no continuity of narrative thread. At a stretch, I guess one could say that it is the story of human life illustrated in a number of discrete and unrelated episodes – and very sharp-eyed readers may spot the occasional detail in one story that is referenced in another – but this really is about as typical a collection of short stories as you will want to find.

The collection is highly readable and some of the stories do linger in the memory. In particular, the middle aged failures stick in the mind – a British rake who lives a hand to mouth existence in an inland Croatian town whilst pretending to be a playboy; and a Russian oligarch watching his empire crumble from the deck of a luxury yacht in the Mediterranean.

Most of the stories do not have much in the way of an ending. They capture a moment in time but any resolution that they might reach – and some do not even manage that – will be unsatisfactory. Perhaps that is a metaphor for life.

And as can happen with collections of themed stories, they can sometimes feel a bit samey. Having everyone travelling abroad was interesting at first but it got old quite quickly. Ultimately they all seemed to boil down to men looking for (and finding) sex. That may be all David Szalay's men are, but I like to think there's more to me.

20 people found this helpful

Helpful

Pet

Short stories about questionable characters without a message or ending

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 21 May 2020

Verified Purchase

Let’s just start with the basics - this is not a novel, this is a collection of 9 stories about nine very different men. I don’t mind depressing reads but this is truly a depiction of really unlikable characters, either losers or really manipulative, up-their-own-backsides, selfish men. Nothing really happens in the stories which is really the biggest problem - you start reading about these dull, unlikable characters, the story then somewhat picks up, at least to an extent that the reader may think something big is going to happen, but then the story ends, with literally nothing to hang onto. It doesn’t end with some sort of a suggestion, an “open ending”, a lesson to be learned - no, it just simply ends. The main subject matter in all of them? Sex and money, and the sex is always with fat, ugly women, women with scars, women who look like whales, women that are old but disgustingly needy and horny, or both. If they are pretty? They are prostitutes or gold diggers. You get the point. Not very pleasant. I have to say, this really made me wonder if most men are this disgusting and one dimensional as these characters, at which point I just had to snap out of it and realise this book is just not very good at depicting a wide array of characters, experiences, or, well, decent men for that matter. The only redeeming stories that had some sort of a meaning where the one about the man is his 30s and the last one about the old man being at the last stage of his life. That’s it, these are the 2 stars. Definitely not worth of any Man Booker prizes. Bleak and boring with little substance.

9 people found this helpful

Helpful

Kindle Customer

Time after time

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 16 April 2018

Verified Purchase

Echoes of recent reading of Peter Stamm stories. Euro alienated life. But not the Euro minimalism of Stamm. Szalay is aware of changing feelings though these are always predicated against a monolithic passivity, to do with social norms which the protagonists always seem on the verge of or over the verge of transgressing. The men are led by their sexdrive, morphing into status and its symbols and the women start of as accessories to these passions but gradually assume a competence which is problematic in the men.
Whether it comprehensively describes the current or even timeless state of men (or man) I'm not so sure, though the progression from youth to old age is carefully observed. That makes it seem a monumental task but really it's a series of nicely observed journeys by characters who complement each other's moral and emotional depths - or lack of them. Perhaps that is the completeness of the work, though I couldn't help feeling that Szalay don't really get his teeth into the musings on time in the final episode, which alludes to the first , kind of completing the circle. But overall quite engaging.

Helpful

Sharon

Szalay - A Writer's Writer?

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 29 October 2016

Verified Purchase

Can just imagine Szalay's publisher telling him that short story collections don't sell - why not drop the story titles and replace them with parts and chapters. Having said that, I'm really happy to see a short story collection on the Booker shortlist and the book deserves to be there more than some of the other titles (I'm thinking about Hot Milk and Eileen). The book holds together very well - 9 stories of men, arranged in the sequence of their ages 17-73 - each facing an existential crisis of some kind, whether they recognise it or not . A billionaire contemplates suicide after losing everything he has after a disastrous court case; a personal-trainer hired as a bodyguard defends the honour of the call-girl he's protecting; an old man faces the imminent bereavement of death; a schoolboy on holiday is almost seduced by a sleazy landlady. There are some interesting overlapping between the stories which it's best for the reader to find for themselves. The stories take place in the same year over subsequent months - April to December - and all are set in the borderless Europe of the EU (so seem even more poignant after Brexit!). The writing is very good and Szalay makes even the mundane compelling. Plan to reread.

3 people found this helpful

Helpful

Amazon Music Stream millions of songs	AbeBooks Books, art & collectables	ACX Audiobook Publishing Made Easy	Amazon Web Services Scalable Cloud Computing Services

Audible Download Audiobooks	Book Depository Books With Free Delivery Worldwide	DPReview Digital Photography	Goodreads Book reviews & recommendations

Amazon Home Services Experienced pros Happiness Guarantee	IMDb Movies, TV & Celebrities	Kindle Direct Publishing Indie Digital & Print Publishing Made Easy	Shopbop Designer Fashion Brands

Amazon Warehouse Deep Discounts Open-Box Products	Amazon Business Service for business customers	Whole Foods Market We Believe in Real Food

Follow the author