Paul Kingsnorth - Savage Gods

PAUL KINGSNORTH

NON-FICTION

One No, Many Yeses

Real England

Uncivilisation: the Dark Mountain Manifesto
(with Dougald Hine)

Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist

FICTION

The Wake

Beast

POETRY

Kidland and other poems

Songs from the Blue River

Paul Kingsnorths books have such a profound affect on me that I always feel I must make them into a play or a film or something after reading them. In a world of such confusing news and opinion, I always find a story in Pauls writing that leads me to an authentic place in the world. Mark Rylance

SAVAGE GODS

Horrible and brilliant and terribly important. This book is what Ive been looking for for years, and what Id hoped never to see.

Charles Foster, author of Being a Beast

Savage Gods is a compromise of a book, veering between inner and outer worlds, shape-shifting from narrative to aphorism to vision. But tidiness is indisposed to containing multitudes, and theres a price to pay in retaining them. Kingsnorths troublesome words do an unexpectedly moving job of capturing the problem of being, and of writing about it.

Nina Lyon, The Spectator

What ultimately makes Savage Gods a success is Kingsnorths passion. His honest probing of himself is the real strength of this book. He is a man bearing everything. And for all the confessional memoirs so popular at the moment, this is the real deal.

Scott Beauchamp, The American Conservative

Paul Kingsnorth has always held my attention, and at times completely astounded me with his varied and vital writing talent. This spectacular little volume is a book all about that writing talent, but discussions of process and craft are secondary to a more ontological exploration of what writing really is and what it very much isnt.

Mark Schultz, Carmichaels Bookstore, Louisville, Kentucky

An enigma of a book, Savage Gods takes a long hard look at the creative process of writing as well as deep, philosophical questions of purpose, place, and belonging honest in a way few books ever are.

Caleb Masters, Bookmarks, Winston-Salem, North Carolina

THE WAKE

Rhythmic, angry, darkly funny and at times poetic.

Jennifer Maloney, The Wall Street Journal

Like Tolkiens and Martins books, The Wake presents the reader with an immersive experience What sharply distinguishes it is its disorienting use of high literary experiment and its insistence on uncertainty.

Laura Marsh, Bookforum

Kingsnorths daring linguistic conceit propels a tale that feels strangely contemporary in its concern for what is lost when a social order perishes.

Hari Kunzru, The New York Times Book Review

BEAST

Wild and spectacular. Anthony Domestico, The Boston Globe

Beast cements Kingsnorths reputation as a furiously gifted writer.

Benedict Cosgrove, The Washington Post

[Written] with unnerving smoothness and lyricism [Beast] leads readers away from optimism and realism alike, deeper into a new scrutiny of the stories by which we try to make our way.

Kenneth Baker, The San Francisco Chronicle

On its own, [Beast] is a taut, thrilling and mystifying narrative. Taken in tandem with The Wake, it forms a powerful meditation on violence, society and the nature of exile.

Tobias Carroll, Star Tribune (Minneapolis)

Kingsnorth is becoming an existential David Mitchell: a versatile weaver of the seemingly unconnected into a tapestry realer than reality. Boris Kachka, Vulture

CONFESSIONS OF A RECOVERING ENVIRONMENTALIST AND OTHER ESSAYS

Kingsnorths is a much-needed perspective in the environmental movement, recovering or otherwise.

Scott F. Parker, Star Tribune (Minneapolis)

Although he writes about feeling despair, grief, and loss in the face of climate change, Kingsnorth says he has not given up hopeonly what he perceives as false hope. Michael Berry, Sierra Magazine

A brilliant and sobering collection recommended for anyone, liberal or conservative, concerned about the runaway train of climate change. Booklist

WHO WE ARE TWO DOLLAR RADIO is a family-run outfit dedicated to reaffirming the cultural and artistic spirit of the publishing industry. We aim to do this by presenting bold works of literary merit, each book, individually and collectively, providing a sonic progression that we believe to be too loud to ignore.

SOME RECOMMENDED LOCATIONS FOR READINGSAVAGE GODS:

Pretty much anywhere because books are portable and the perfect technology!

ANYTHING ELSE? Yes. Do not copy this bookwith the exception of quotes used in critical essays and reviewswithout the prior written permission from the copyright holder and publisher. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means.

If only we arrange our life in accordance with the principle which tells us that we must always trust in the difficult, then what now appears to us as the most alien will become our most intimate and trusted experience. How could we forget those ancient myths that stand at the beginning of all races, the myths about dragons that at the last moment are transformed into princesses? Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage.

Rilke

Theres more to life than books, you know, but not much more.

The Smiths

SAVAGE GODS

Writers are lost people.

Nobody would write a book if they werent lost. Nobody would write a book if they were not in search of paradise, and nobody would be in search of paradise unless they believed it might exist somewhere, which means out there, which means just beyond my reach. Writers can see paradise, but can never touch it. Writers want to belong to a place that is just beyond their reach, because if they were to reach the place they would have to do the hard work of being in it. Writers dont belong anywhere, or to anyone, and they do not want to. They are driven by some severance and none of them understands it. Not just writers. Painters. Musicians. Artists. Art is the search for intact things in a world in which all things are broken.