In his riveting new novel, internationally bestselling New York Times Notable author and Prix Medicis étranger winner David Vann reimagines his father's final days. Middle-aged and deeply depressed, Jim arrives in California from Alaska and surrenders himself to the care of his brother Gary, who intends to watch over him. Swinging unpredictably from manic highs to extreme lows, Jim wanders ghostlike through the remains of his old life, attempting to find meaning in his tattered relationships with family and friends. As sessions with his therapist become increasingly combative and his connections to others seem ever more tenuous, Jim is propelled forwards by his thoughts, which have the potential to lead him, despairingly, to his end.Halibut on the Moon is a searing exploration of a man held captive by the dark logic of depression struggling to wrench himself free. In vivid and haunting prose, Vann offers us an aching portrait of a mind in peril,...

It is 13th century B.C. and aboard the ship Argo, Medea, Jason and the Argonauts make their return journey across the Black Sea from Persia's Colchis, in possession of the Golden Fleece.David Vann, in brilliant poetic prose, gives us a nuanced and electric portrait of one of Greek mythology's most fascinating and notorious figures, Medea; an ancient tale reimagined through the eyes of the woman often cast as sorceress and monster. Atmospheric and spellbinding, Bright Air Black is an indispensable and provocative take on one of our earliest texts and the most intimate and corporal version of Medea's story ever told.David Vann is an internationally bestselling author published in twenty-one languages. He is the winner of fifteen prizes and his books have appeared on seventy Best Books lists in a dozen countries. He is a professor at the University of Warwick in England and lives in New Zealand for half of the year. 'Vann's prose...

"Like Melville, Faulkner, and McCarthy, Vann is already one of the great ones of American literature."—ABC(Spain)“Vann's prose is as pure as a gulp of water from an Alaskan stream."—Financial TimesDavid Vann's dazzling debut Legend of a Suicide was reviewed in over a 150 major global publications, won 11 prizes worldwide, was on 40 “best books of the year" lists, and established its author as a literary master. Since then, Vann has delivered an exceptional body of work, receiving, among others, best foreign novel in France and Spain (France's Prix Medicis Etranger, Spain's Premi Llibreter), a California Book Award, and the mid-career St. Francis College Literary Prize. Aquarium, his implosive new book and first to be published by Grove, will take Vann to a wider audience than ever before.Twelve year old Caitlin lives alone with her mother—a docker at the local container port—in subsidized housing next to...

The prizewinning author of Dirt, Caribou Island, and Legend of a Suicide returns with a searing, morally complex novel about families, violence, regret, and shattered faith.In the fall of 1978, on a 640-acre family ranch on Goat Mountain in Northern California, an eleven-year-old boy joins his grandfather, his father, and his father’s best friend on the family’s annual deer hunt.Every fall they return to this dry, yellowed landscape dotted with oak, buckbrush, and the occasional stand of pine trees. Goat Mountain is what this family owns and where they belong. It is where their history is kept, where their memories and stories are shared. And for the first time, the boy’s story will become part of their narrative, if he can find a buck. Itching to shoot, he is ready. When the men arrive at the gate to their land, the father discovers a poacher and sights him through the scope of his gun. He offers his son a look—a simple act that will explode in tragedy, transforming these men and this family, forcing them to question themselves and everything they thought they knew.David Vann creates a haunting and provocative novel, in prose devastating and beautiful in its precision, that explores our most primal urges and beliefs, the bonds of blood and religion that define and secure us, and the consequences of our actions—what we owe for what we’ve done.

On a small island in a glacier-fed lake on Alaska's Kenai Peninsula, a marriage is unravelling. Gary, driven by thirty years of diverted plans, and Irene, haunted by a tragedy in her past, are trying to rebuild their life together. Following the outline of Gary's old dream, they're hauling logs out to Caribou Island in good weather and in terrible storms, in sickness and in health, to patch together the kind of cabin that drew them to Alaska in the first place. Across the water on the mainland, Irene and Gary's grown daughter, Rhoda is starting her own life. She fantasizes about the perfect wedding day, whilst her betrothed, Jim the dentist, wonders about the possibility of an altogether different future. From the author of the massively-acclaimed Legend of a Suicide, comes a devastating novel about a marriage, a couple blighted by past shadows and the weight of expectation, of themselves and of each other. Brilliantly drawn and fiercely honest in its depiction of love and disappointment, David Vann's first novel confirms him as one of America's most dazzling writers of fiction.

The prizewinning author of Dirt, Caribou Island, and Legend of a Suicide returns with a searing, morally complex novel about families, violence, regret, and shattered faith.In the fall of 1978, on a 640-acre family ranch on Goat Mountain in Northern California, an eleven-year-old boy joins his grandfather, his father, and his father's best friend on the family's annual deer hunt.Every fall they return to this dry, yellowed landscape dotted with oak, buckbrush, and the occasional stand of pine trees. Goat Mountain is what this family owns and where they belong. It is where their history is kept, where their memories and stories are shared. And for the first time, the boy's story will become part of their narrative, if he can find a buck. Itching to shoot, he is ready. When the men arrive at the gate to their land, the father discovers a poacher and sights him through the scope of his gun. He offers his son a look--a simple act that...

Work so that you can keep working. It seemed a proposition that could easily end in suicide. I wanted to escape this. I wanted to free myself from the working world and have time to write. And I wanted adventure. Grendel could never free me, but this boat could.David Vann has loved boats all his life. So when his academic career seems to be stuck in the doldrums, he leaps at the opportunity to start an educational charter business, teaching creative writing workshops aboard a sailboat. But a trip to Turkey sees him dreaming bigger - and before he knows it, he is at the helm of his own ninety-foot boat, running charters along the Turkish coast. And here his troubles begin. Sinking deep into debt, and encountering everything from a lost rudder to freak storms, Vann is on the verge of losing everything - including his life. Part high-seas adventure, part journey of self-discovery, A Mile Down is a gripping and unforgettable story of...