Britain

David Keenan

Photo © Heather Leigh

David Keenan

David Keenan’s This Is Memorial Device won the Collyer Bristow Award for Debut Fiction and was shortlisted for the 2017 Gordon Burn Prize. His second novel, For the Good Times won the 2019 Gordon Burn Prize. Edna O’Brien described reading his third novel, Xstabeth (Europa, 2022), as “feel[ing] like being cut open to the accompanying sound of ecstatic music.” His fourth novel, Monument Maker, will also be published by Europa. He lives in Glasgow, Scotland.

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Latest reviews

“A ghostly continent-striding coming-of-age story.”

— The New Statesman, Jun 3 2023

“An uncompromising, 800-page postmodern epic, which seem[s] to record the full David Keenan cosmology.”

— The New Statesman, Jun 3 2023

“A story that is as endless and timeless as art, science, and the galaxy.”

— Ghostville Hero, Mar 16 2023

“Time travel, a summer romance, the 19th-century siege of Khartoum and a face transplant by Nazi scientists all feature in this expansive novel, itself made of intertwining novels.”

— The New York Times Book Review, Mar 15 2023

★ “A daring experiment that questions what fiction can and should be.”

— Shelf Awareness (Starred Review), Mar 22 2022

★ “A philosophical, poetic novel... An open conversation about music and art that explores the meanings and interrelationship of synchronicity, significance, memories, mercy, and grace... The Russian soul and its attendant angst are well explored in this short novel.”

— Library Journal (Starred Review), Jan 1 2022

★ “Music and the sacred converge in unexpected ways... This isn’t a typical rock novel—but that’s what makes it so compelling.”

— Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review), Dec 21 2021

“Keenan has structured the story in a most original fashion.... [His] meandering novel will shock and delight, confuse and inspire, all in a manner that truly elevates the form.”

— Booklist, Nov 29 2021