Man Gone Down Dublin Impac Winner 2009

Description

This book is an extraordinary debut that tackles race, wealth and family head on as a young black man finds the American Dream dissolving around him. On the eve of this thirty-fifth birthday, the unnamed black narrator of "Man Gone Down" finds himself broke, estranged from his white wife and three children, and living in the bedroom of a friend's six-year-old child. He has four days to come up with the money to keep his kids in school and make a down payment on an apartment for them to live in. As we slip between his childhood in inner city Boston and present-day New York City, we discover a life marked by abuse, abandonment, raging alcoholism, and the best and worst intentions of a supposedly integrated America. This is a story of the American Dream gone awry, about what it's like to feel preprogrammed to fail in life and the urge to escape that sentence.

Promotion info

An extraordinary debut that tackles race, wealth and family head on as a young black man finds the American Dream dissolving around him.

Awards

Winner of International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award 2009.

Reviews

"* '[A] jazzy, sinewy debut... Thomas's urgent, quicksilver prose makes even the darkest moments of this novel shine' - O. The Oprah Magazine * 'Vivid, graphic and poignant' - Washington Post * 'Powerful and moving... An impressive success' - New York Times Book Review"

Author description

Michael Thomas was born and raised in Boston. He's been a cab driver, carpenter, restaurateur and filmmaker. He received his BA from Hunter College and his MFA from Warren Wilson College. He teaches at Hunter and lives in Brooklyn with his wife and three children. Man Gone Down is his first novel.