Milkman

Winner of the 2018 Man Booker Prize for Fiction
Winner of the 2019 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction

I enjoyed Milkman immensely, and it's one of my Top 5s for this year. It's such a fast-paced, vivid, and lyrical read — it grabs your attention from the very first sentence and just doesn't let go. But it's also a very menacing read. The tension builds and builds as you sit on pins and needles, eager to see how our narrator will cope with the unwanted attentions from the Milkman and the embarrassingly horrifying rumors swirling around about their "relationship." In her own quiet way, Anna Burns makes a very damning statement about violence and how it can affect a community — especially the women. It's a truly brilliant novel that will stand the test of a great many rereads. Recommended By Sheila N., Powells.com

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 sister’s attempts to avoid him—and to keep her mother from finding out about her maybe-boyfriend — rumors spread and the threat of violence lingers. Milkman is 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, Milkman establishes Anna Burns as one of the most consequential voices of our day.

“I haven’t stopped talking about Anna Burns’s astonishing Milkman. The voice is dazzling, funny, acute. Like all great writing it invents its own context, becomes its own universe.” Eoin McNamee, The Irish Times

“From the opening page her words pull us into the daily violence of her world — threats of murder, people killed by state hit squads — while responding to the everyday realities of her life as a young woman.” Kwame Anthony Appiah, chair of Man Booker Prize judging panel

“Milkman is delivered in a breathless, hectic, glorious torrent...It’s an astute, exquisite account of Northern Ireland’s social landscap...A potent and urgent book, with more than a hint of barely contained fury.” Irish Independent

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

Anna Burns was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland. She is the author of two novels, No Bones and Little Constructions, and of the novella, Mostly Hero. No Bones won the Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize and was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction. She lives in East Sussex, England.