Michael has travelled a long way from his boyhood under the endless skies of the Midwest. His retirement is peaceful, if solitary. But one day there is a visitation: a mysterious car on the seafront, and a package delivered. From its contents, Michael understands that he has been commissioned to undertake a final journey.
As Michael makes his way deep into a distant desert – a strange and liminal landscape that lies between hell and redemption – he undertakes another journey, into long-suppressed memories: of Vietnam and the dying days of war, and to face a final accounting for what was done.
Taut, atmospheric and moving, Spies in Canaan is a powerful elegy to the pain of love, the guilt of old age, and the grace of atonement.
Spies in Canaan
David Park
A bold and unsettling parable about guilt, atonement and redemption from the winner of the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year Award.
Material available
Rights Sold
Danish and French
Option Publishers
Arabic, Danish, French, German, Greek, Italian, Lithuanian, Macedonian, and Turkish
Book Details
Imprint: Bloomsbury Publishing | Pub date: May 2022 | Format: 216 x 135mm | Extent: 208 pages
About the Author
David Park has written nine novels and two collections of short stories.
His novel Travelling in a Strange Land won the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year. His other books include The Light of Amsterdam, which was shortlisted for the 2014 International IMPAC Prize and The Poets' Wives, which was selected as Belfast's Choice for One City One Book 2014. He has won the Authors' Club First Novel Award, the Bass Ireland Arts Award for Literature, the Ewart-Biggs Memorial Prize and the American Ireland Fund Literary Award. He has received a Major Individual Artist Award from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland and been shortlisted for the Irish Novel of the Year Award four times. In 2014 he was longlisted for the Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award.
He lives in County Down, Northern Ireland.
