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Bright Air Black

Bright Air Black 1

by David Vann
Paperback
Publication Date: 20/03/2017
4/5 Rating 1 Review

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$28.75

It is 13th century B.C. and aboard the ship Argo, Medea, Jason and the Argonauts make their return journey across the Black Sea from Persia’s Colchis, in possession of the Golden Fleece.

David Vann, in brilliant poetic prose, gives us a nuanced and electric portrait of one of Greek mythology’s most fascinating and notorious figures, Medea; an ancient tale reimagined through the eyes of the woman often cast as sorceress and monster.

Atmospheric and spellbinding, Bright Air Black is an indispensable and provocative take on one of our earliest texts and the most intimate and corporal version of Medea’s story ever told.

ISBN:
9781925355208
9781925355208
Category:
Contemporary fiction
Format:
Paperback
Publication Date:
20-03-2017
Publisher:
Text Publishing
Country of origin:
Australia
Pages:
272
Dimensions (mm):
234x153x26mm
Weight:
0.36kg

‘Vann’s prose is as pure as a gulp of water from an Alaskan stream.' – Financial Times

‘[Vann] is the real thing—a mature, risk-taking and fantastically adept fiction writer who dares go to the darkest places, explore their most appalling corners.' –  Observer

‘One of the most exciting writers at work today.' –  Australian

‘One of the most darkly talented and unsettling writers working today.’ – Guardian

‘Vann is a brave writer, daring to write about and depict things that most other authors would baulk at, but that’s what makes him so good—that unflinching eye for the darkness you could potentially find in any of us, given the wrong chain of events.’ – Independent

‘David Vann has been one of the most thrilling discoveries of the past decade or so.’ – Stephen Romei

‘David Vann’s work has a spare, parable-like quality…[he] writes with deft control and a gift for prose propelled as effortlessly as a school of fish.’ – Financial Times

‘David Vann is surely one of the most powerful writers working today.’ – New Zealand Herald

‘Vann’s provocative prose is filled with a sense of wonder and beauty, even when the lives he describes are tragic.’ – LA Times

‘Aquarium feels like a soft thing lined with blood: a small, resolutely inward-looking book, full or ornate sentences with a darkness that frequently makes you want to squint and flinch as you turn the pages.’ – Guardian

‘The story is a familiar one, but David Vann breathes new life into the tale, taking the reader deep into Medea’s psyche. Atmospheric and poetic.’ – Nicki J. Markus

‘Sensual and violent, often simultaneously, Vann’s novel evokes the primal force of women’s power.’ – Booklist

‘Wonderfully evocative and enjoyable…A great addition to the oeuvre of Greek mythological retellings.’ – Randomly Yours, Alex

David Vann

David Vann's internationally bestselling books have been published in 23 languages, won 14 prizes and appeared on 83 Best Books of the Year lists in a dozen countries.

A former Guggenheim fellow, he is currently a Professor at the University of Warwick in England and Honorary Professor at the University of Franche-Comte in France.

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1 Review

4.5 stars

“One of the men comes to the stern near Medea to fish in last light. A rough net weighted with stones…. He… flings the net overboard, beautiful pattern in flight, a practiced throw, the stones swirling out a perfect circle just as they hit the water… The surface becomes silver, opaque, molten, as if the sea could be reforged every day, great ingot of tin melted down each night, this fisherman casting his net to capture impurities”

Bright Air Black is the fifth novel by American author, David Vann, and is a retelling of the story of Medea. Vann begins his story with Medea, Jason and the Argonauts fleeing Colchis on the Argo, Golden Fleece in their possession, her father Aeetes in pursuit, Medea throwing pieces of her murdered brother Aspyrtus overboard to delay her father’s progress.

Their flight from Colchis to Iolcus, taking the daring step of sailing at night, is fraught with danger, both from Aeetes and the elements: “Fear living in close. In the hull and mast that might break, in the rudders, in the air that somewhere holds land, but mostly in the water. Rock and every creature unknown. No limit to the size of what can grow below. All animals on land known but always something new coming from the depths”

The sailors are wary of Medea, priestess of Hekate, rightly so, but her power over them holds no sway once they reach Iolcus and meet Pelias, the king Jason intends to usurp. Her grandfather may be Helios the sun, but Vann presents the infamous Medea, magical and monstrous, as a wholly human woman, if a determined, intelligent, tenacious and vengeful one.

Vann’s descriptive prose, as always, is stunning: “The sail no inanimate thing. Terrible in high wind, rigid and merciless and powerful beyond imagining, a thing of fear and will. But even now, in lighter winds, filled with desire, a restlessness, capable even of regret and sorrow, falling along an edge, hunching down, refilling but not entirely, some cost to the past. Only with no air, when it hangs fully slack, does it seem like linen. At all other times, this is impossible to believe”, and his personal experience with sailing is apparent on every page.

Vann’s evocative title comes from Euripides’s Medea; the beautiful cover shows the type of ship that Argo would have been; his interpretation of this legend from over three thousand years ago is powerful, enthralling and atmospheric.

Contains Spoilers No
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