Milkman

Winner of the 2018 Man Booker Prize

Anna Burns offers a tale of gossip & hearsay, silence & deliberate deafness. It is the story of inaction with enormous consequences. Burns’ tale takes the reader down the rabbit-hole of late 1970s Northern Ireland during its 30-year conflict: the Troubles

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In this unnamed city, to be interesting is dangerous. Middle sister, our 18-year-old protagonist, is busy attempting to keep her mother from discovering her maybe-boyfriend & to keep everyone in the dark about her encounter with Milkman, a powerful & frightening older man. But when first brother-in-law sniffs out her struggle, & rumours start to swell, middle sister becomes ‘interesting’. The last thing she ever wanted to be. To be interesting is to be noticed & to be noticed is dangerous. Milkman is persistent, the word is spreading, & she is no longer in control . . .

"For all the simplicity of its setup, Milkman is a richly complex portrayal of a besieged community & its traumatized citizens, of lives lived within many concentric circles of oppression...There is a pulsating menace at the heart of the book, of which the title character is an uncannily indeterminate avatar, but also a deep sadness at the human cost of conflict ... For all the darkness of the world it illuminates, Milkman is as strange & variegated and brilliant as a northern sunset. You just have to turn your face toward it, and give it your full attention."  — Mark OConnell, Slate

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Anna Burns is the author of 3 novels - No Bones, Little Constructions & Milkman - & of the novella Mostly Hero. No Bones won the Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize & was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction. Milkman has, to date, won the 2018 Man Booker Prize, the 2019 Orwell Prize for Political Fiction, & the International Dublin Literary Award 2020. It was also shortlisted for the Women’s Prize & the Rathbone’s Folio Prize.