Absolution Hardcover - 2012

A New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice
A Waterstones Best Debut Novel
A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2012
FINALIST 2012 – Desmond Elliott Prize 
WINNER 2012 – Spear’s Book Award for Best First Book
SHORTLISTED 2012 – Spear’s Book Award for Best Novel
FINALIST 2012 – The Guardian First Book Award
SHORTLISTED 2012 – Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize 
FINALIST 2012 – Green Carnation Prize
FINALIST 2013 – RSL Ondaatje Prize
FINALIST 2013 – Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award
FINALIST 2014 – International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award
 
“A bold, even audacious examination of truth, memory and forgiveness.”
—Chatelaine

“The wonder of this outstanding first novel is that Flanery weaves the stories together with assurance and craftsmanship, digging underneath many received ideas about the old and new South Africa.”
—The Times
 
“Flanery is an extraordinary new writer and Absolution shines a light on contemporary South Africa and the long shadow of apartheid, the elusive nature of truth and self-perception, and the mysterious alchemy of the creative process. Absolution is a debut of great strength and power.”
—GQ
 
“Compelling.... At times Flanery’s prose evokes Graham Greene.... A literary thriller whose writing is consistently first class.”
—The Observer
 
“Sophisticated debut novel.... This remarkably assured, atmospheric novel perfectly reflects the tenuous trust being forged among South Africans as they look to the future.... Flanery...has already been called the next J.M. Coetzee.”
—Library Journal (starred review)

“Patrick Flanery is an extraordinary new writer. Absolution is smart, moving, and provocative, a rare combination of page-turner and literary triumph. More than a book about South Africa, this is a book about the hunt for the truth, a hunt that is as universal as it is essential. Utterly captivating, this is without a doubt one of the best books I’ve read in a long while.”
—Steven Galloway, author of The Cellist of Sarajevo
 
“One rarely encounters such a confident first novel as Absolution. Patrick Flanery arrives on the scene wholly formed: a writer of superb self-confidence, depth of insight, and resolute clarity. Clare Wald, who occupies the white-hot center of this story, will stay with me. Flanery has a great deal to say about the art of biography, about narrative and its discontents, about the ways a blighted history infiltrates, infects, and transmogrifies the present. As the title suggests, the search for absolution is a human project of vast dimensions, never quite finished. This is a beautifully written piece of fiction, a major accomplishment.”
—Jay Parini, author of The Last Station and The Passages of H.M.

PATRICK FLANERY was born and raised in the USA. After earning a BFA in film from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts he worked for 3 years in the film industry before moving to the UK, where he completed a doctorate in 20th-century English literature at the University of Oxford. He wrote his doctoral thesis on the publishing and adaptation history of Evelyn Waugh's novels. He has written for "Slightly Foxed: The Real Reader's Quarterly "and the "Times Literary Supplement," as well as publishing scholarly articles on British and South African literature and film in academic journals." "