Author:Ocean Vuong
Winner of the 2017 T. S. Eliot Prize
‘Reading Vuong is like watching a fish move: he manages the varied currents of English with muscled intuition.’ New Yorker
An extraordinary debut from a young Vietnamese American, Night Sky with Exit Wounds is a book of poetry unlike any other.
Steeped in war and cultural upheaval and wielding a fresh new language, Vuong writes about the most profound subjects – love and loss, conflict, grief, memory and desire – and attends to them all with lines that feel newly-minted, graceful in their cadences, passionate and hungry in their tender, close attention: ‘…the chief of police/facedown in a pool of Coca-Cola./A palm-sized photo of his father soaking/beside his left ear.’ This is an unusual, important book: both gentle and visceral, vulnerable and assured, and its blend of humanity and power make it one of the best first collections of poetry to come out of America in years.
‘These are poems of exquisite beauty, unashamed of romance, and undaunted by looking directly into the horrors of war, the silences of history. One of the most important debut collections for a generation.’ Andrew McMillan
Winner of the 2017 Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection
A Guardian / Daily Telegraph Book of the Year
PBS Summer Recommendation
Night Sky With Exit Wounds…startled me with its urgency and its relevance. A eerily sure-footed debut.
—— Rupert Thomson , Observer, Books of the YearVuong writes with a piercing, dreamlike clarity.
—— Tristram Fane Saunders , Daily Telegraph, Books of the YearReading Vuong is like watching a fish move: he manages the varied currents of English with muscled intuition … His lines are both long and short, his pose narrative and lyric, his diction formal and insouciant. From the outside, Vuong has fashioned a poetry of inclusion.
—— New YorkerOcean Vuong is one of my auto-buy authors. I keep recommending his Night Sky With Exit Wounds to everyone; I can’t shout loud enough about it… I have quite a complicated relationship with what’s considered "classical poetry" but then someone like Ocean Vuong comes along, and he’s doing something so exciting that you can’t help but get caught up in it.
—— Sara Collins , Refinery29The poetry is a conduit for a life in which violence and delicacy collide… I like the fragility, resilience and the sense that the stories that need telling are hardest to tell – a difficulty Ocean Vuong is courageously minded to overcome.
—— Kate Kellaway , ObserverThere is a powerful emotional undertow to these poems that springs from Mr Vuong’s sincerity and candour, and from his ability to capture specific moments in rime with photographic clarity and a sense of the evanescence of all earthly things.
—— Michiko Kakutani , New York TimesOcean Vuong is the Walt Whitman of Vietnamese American literature. Lyrical, expansive, sexual, provocative, he sings of the Vietnamese body and of Vietnamese history.
—— Viet Thanh Nguyen , Literary HubThe operatic voice of the book is vulnerable and unpredictable. Some of its strongest poems are also the strangest… It is an impressive, uneven, moving book about painful and important subjects – and is the work of a young poet who might, excitingly, say anything next.
—— Jeremy Noel-Tod , The Sunday TimesMany of the poems in this, Vuong’s debut collection, achieve lift-off amid comparable scenes of drama and desperation… This is a book full of promise.
—— David Wheatley , Literary ReviewVuong writes in what may be one of the most unfashionable modes of recent decades, in the richly meditative style of Rainer Maria Rilke. And, almost unbelievably, he does so successfully… Vuong’s roomy, cool, risky poems are more than promising, and this is an exciting and compelling book.
—— John McAuliffe , Irish TimesTaking war and cultural upheaval in its stride, Night Sky with Exit Wounds is an assured but open debut collection. It’s accessible to non-poetry readers while offering sufficient depth to keep the experts engaged.
—— Aimee Grant Cumberbatch , Evening StandardIf you only read one new book of poetry this year, make it Ocean Vuong’s game-changing debut collection. Night Sky With Exit Wounds is breathtakingly beautiful, gut-wrenching and sublime… Phenomenal.
—— AttitudeOne of the most extraordinary first collections of poems in recent memory… The poems sear through the heart, Vuong finding the words and feelings to capture moments with complete clarity.
—— Alex Scott , CentHis style is not unlike a wall of sounds, a relatively consistent, arrestedly pubescent palette of desire and obsession, turned up high enough to hit the pulse.
—— Declan Ryan , Times Literary SupplementFrom its opening lines...the book brims with precise, surreal, erotic imagery… Vuong authoritatively lays claim to a range of symbols and tropes... Vuong possesses a large and unusual imagination… Night Sky with Exit Wounds is a remarkable debut. Where Vuong is headed is anyone’s guess, but you’ll want to go with him.
—— Paul Batchelor , New StatesmanVuong’s intimate lyrical voice, his precise, stark imagery and engagement with gay sexuality construct a familiar story of loss… Balancing memory and silence with erudition, Vuong’s poetry resists being so easily pinned down… Vuong’s poems, written with intelligence and tenderness, offer new spaces for becoming.
—— Sandeep Parmar , GuardianHis debut collection, praised for its “precise, stark” imagery, can be read both as a personal story – of gay sexuality, absent fathers and hyphenated identities – and as a highly erudite exploration of poetry’s possibilities.
—— Martin Doyle , Irish TimesHis debut collection, Night Sky With Exit Wounds, is the work of a man with history on his back, even if he has had to imagine some of it into being again. He brings a mythmaker’s insistence on being seen and heard to subjects ranging from the death of Telemachus’s father, from Homeric myth, to the fall of Saigon and common-or-garden masturbation.
—— Claire Armistead , GuardianVuong’s words writhe and spin – his use of English is astonishing. He’s a smelter at his poetry, making words transform into something other than letters and meaning…. His gay love poems are stark, beautiful and utterly unnerving in their uncompromising adoration… A magical journey into Vuong’s imagination and talents and an astonishing debut collection.
—— GsceneNight Sky With Exit Wounds…contains poems of finely pitched, operatic feeling that unpick the violence and fragility of masculinity with wisdom and humour.
—— Jeremy Noel-Tod , Sunday TimesFew poets in recent years have made such an immediate impact as Vuong.
—— Tristram Fane Saunders , Daily TelegraphBy turns moving, charming and harrowing… An extraordinary, muscular first collection.
—— Neil D.A Stewart , Civilian[Night Sky with Exit Wounds] is delicate, intimate and political.
—— Deborah LevySometimes, I think of it as a song cycle; sometimes, a book of poems; sometimes, an epic. Vuong puts himself at the centre of this collection in an astonishing way, even as he is also entirely willing to set himself aside.
—— Alexander Chee , FriezeOcean Vuong’s Night Sky With Exit Wounds... is beguiling and sublime.
—— Diana Evans , GuardianVuong's voice is unique and inspires empathy.
—— Eva Waite-Taylor , IndependentBeautiful... [Night Sky With Exit Wounds] is pretty special.
—— Francesca Hayward , ObserverI loved Dadland for its tenderness, humour and candour. It has begun to open the door for me to what may well lie ahead in my life, in so many of our lives, in terms of ageing parents. And it has also taught me something deeply moving about tolerance, and about love
—— Robert MacfarlaneA wonderful, haunting and beautifully written memoir... I found myself laughing out loud at times and, at others, unable to hold back the tears... An absolutely stunning book
—— James HollandDadland has the weight of family love but fizzes along in accessible and dynamic prose, highly recommended
—— Andrew McMillanA mesmerising performance by a natural storyteller gifted with the most seductive material possible, in the wild and wonderful life of her exasperating Irish father. Pain and annoyance is transmuted into pure narrative gold, as Keggie Carew interrogates the legend of this wartime adventurer and the bitter comedy of his domestic relationships and his late decline. A brave, risk-taking tale that alarms, delights and moves. As soon as you come to the end, you want to start again, to see if those things really happened
—— Iain SinclairYou love these people from the first page ... As Tom's life falls apart memory by memory, Keggie is picking it up again and her storytelling is spell-binding. Effortlessly readable, this is a delight combining laughter - and tears, yes, quite a few of those.
—— ConnexionCompelling
—— Charlotte Heathcote , Daily ExpressA moving memoir-cum-biography.
—— Molly McCloskey , Irish TimesBy some margin my Book of the Month... A detective story, a family history, a thrilling tale of derring-do, and the most distinctive and affecting memoir I’ve read since H is for Hawk.
—— BooksellerUtterly remarkable, and beautifully evoked… Dadland is a completely riveting, deeply poignant “manhunt” for which I predict great things.
—— BooksellerDadland, by Keggie Carew, is being tipped for award-winning breakout success in the vein of H is for Hawk
—— Jon Coates , Sunday ExpressIt’s an exorcism, ghost-hunt and swim through the archipelago of her father’s shattered self… The author’s descriptions have an easy lyricism.
—— Ed Cripps , Times Literary SupplementThe old question 'what did you do in the war, Dad?' has never had a more surprising or moving answer.
—— David HepworthWarm and funny, sometimes regretful and sad, but overall a read like a rollercoaster. Wonderful.
—— Western Morning NewsYou know the saying that everyone has a book in them? Well, unless your book is as good as this, I'd give up right now
—— Daily Mail , Markus BerkmannYou know the saying that everyone has a book in them? Well, unless your book is as good as this, I’d give up right now… This gripping book, written with real verve and a narrative expertise that wouldn’t shame a veteran.
—— Sally Morris , Daily MailA brilliant, bittersweet biography.
—— Cornelia Parker , ObserverKeggie’s writing is immersive… She writes with a warmth and generosity about her father, a man who was a genuine character and hero.
—— Paul Cheney , NudgeDadland is deeply personal. But it is also the story of our generations: people touched by war and by Alzheimer’s
—— Charlotte Heathcote , Daily Express