BARBARIAN DAYS: A SURFING LIFE

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Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and William Hill Sports Book of the Year: Barbarian Days is a deeply rendered self-portrait of a lifelong surfer looking for transcendence ‘that recalls early James Salter’ (Geoff Dyer, Observer)

Surfing only looks like a sport. To devotees, it is something else entirely: a beautiful addiction, a mental and physical study, a passionate way of life.

New Yorker writer William Finnegan first started surfing as a young boy in California and Hawaii. Barbarian Days is his immersive memoir of a life spent travelling the world chasing waves through the South Pacific, Australia, Asia, Africa and beyond. Finnegan describes the edgy yet enduring brotherhood forged among the swell of the surf; and recalling his own apprenticeship to the world’s most famous and challenging waves, he considers the intense relationship formed between man, board and water.

Barbarian Days is an old-school adventure story, a social history, an extraordinary exploration of one man’s gradual mastering of an exacting and little-understood art. It is a memoir of dangerous obsession and enchantment.

‘Reading this guy on the subject of waves and water is like reading Hemingway on bullfighting; William Burroughs on controlled substances; Updike on adultery. . . . a coming-of-age story, seen through the gloss resin coat of a surfboard’ Sports Illustrated

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Biography announced on 18/4/2016.
Winner of the William Hill Sports Book of the Year announced on 24/11/2016

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Corsair
Publication date ‏ : ‎ 10 May 2016
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Print length ‏ : ‎ 512 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1472151410
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1472151414
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 402 g
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 13 x 3.4 x 19.5 cm
Country of Origin ‏ : ‎ India
Importer ‏ : ‎ Hachette India
Packer ‏ : ‎ Hachette India
Generic Name ‏ : ‎ Book
Best Sellers Rank: #138,737 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #2 in Surfing, Windsurfing & Water Skiing (Books) #3,996 in Biographies & Autobiographies (Books)
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