Sing, Unburied, Sing: SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2018 - Softcover

This wrenching new novel by Jesmyn Ward digs deep into the not-buried heart of the American nightmare. A must (Margaret Atwood Twitter)

Maybe that's the miracle here: that ordinary people whose lives have become so easy to classify into categories like rural poor, drug-dependent, products of the criminal justice system, possess the weight and the value of the mythic . Such feats of empathy are difficult, all too often impossible to muster in real life. But they feel genuinely inevitable when offered by a writer of such lyric imagination as Ward (New York Times Book Review)

It is rich, sometimes unbearably so ... The signal characteristic of Ward's prose is its lyricism ... the effect is hypnotic ... This, and her ease with vernacular language, puts Ward in fellowship with such forebears as Zora Neale Hurston and William Faulkner ... The tone and atmosphere in "Sing, Unburied, Sing" call out, too, to Toni Morrison-particularly "Beloved," whose most sorrowful revelations are echoed in the climax of "Sing" (New Yorker)

The heir to Faulkner (Time)

A powerfully alive novel haunted by ghosts; a road trip where people can go but they can never leave; a visceral and intimate drama that plays out like a grand epic, Sing, Unburied, Sing is staggering (Marlon James, Winner of the Man Booker Prize 2015)

However eternal its concerns, "Sing, Unburied, Sing" is perfectly poised for the moment (New York Times)

Ward's prose is characterised by its lyrical beauty: woven throughout are precise, elegant registrations of sensory impression, miniature epiphanies that momentarily lift us from the immediate situation ... undeniably well-executed (Sunday Times)

The connection between the injustices of the past and the desperation of present are clearly drawn in Sing, Unburied, Sing, a book that charts the lines between the living and the dead, the loving and the broken. I am a huge fan of Jesmyn Ward's work, and this book proves that she is one of the most important writers in America today (Ann Patchett)

One of the most powerfully poetic writers in the country ... Readers may be reminded of the trapped spirits in George Saunders's recent novel, "Lincoln in the Bardo," but Toni Morrison's "Beloved" is a more direct antecedent (Washington Post)

Speaks to maintaining hope in the face of one's plight, and the true strength (and fragility) of familial bonds (Buzzfeed)