All That Man Is

David Szalay

Oct 2016 · Highbridge Audio · Narrated by Huw Parmenter, Mark Meadows, and Sean Barrett

About this audiobook

Nine men. Each of them at a different stage in life, each of them away from home, and each of them striving-in the suburbs of Prague, in an overdeveloped Alpine village, beside a Belgian motorway, in a dingy Cyprus hotel-to understand what it means to be alive, here and now. Tracing a dramatic arc from the spring of youth to the winter of old age, the ostensibly separate narratives of All That Man Is aggregate into a picture of a single shared existence, a picture that interrogates the state of modern manhood while bringing to life, unforgettably, the physical and emotional terrain of an increasingly globalized Europe. And so these nine lives form an ingenious and new kind of novel, in which David Szalay expertly plots a dark predicament for the twenty-first-century man. Dark and disturbing, but also often wickedly and uproariously comic, All That Man Is is notable for the acute psychological penetration Szalay brings to bear on his characters, from the working-class ex-grunt to the pompous college student, the middle-aged loser to the Russian oligarch. Szalay is a writer of supreme gifts-a master of a new kind of realism that vibrates with detail, intelligence, relevance, and devastating pathos.

About the author

David Szalay is the author of London and the South-East, which won the Betty Trask Prize and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize; The Innocent; and Spring. In 2013 he was named one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists. He lives in Budapest.

Mark Meadows has recorded over eighty audiobooks. He can be heard frequently on BBC Radio, with shows including Book at Bedtime and Lost Souls. He is a former musical director of The Swingle Singers and has various theater and recording credits as composer and arranger, in addition to his numerous stage-acting credits.

Sean Barrett is an English actor and voice actor. His film and television credits include Labyrinth, Return to Oz, The Dark Crystal, Fair Ground!, Tugs, and Dark Towers.