Skip to main navigation Skip to main content

Taiwan Travelogue by Yáng Shuāng-zǐ, translated by Lin King has won the 2024 National Book Award for Translated Literature!!! Buy now

Book Title

Milkman

Subtitle
A Novel
Author 1
Anna Burns
Body
In an unnamed city, middle sister stands out for the wrong reasons. She reads while walking, for one. And she has been taking French night classes downtown. So when a local paramilitary known as the milkman begins pursuing her, she suddenly becomes “interesting,” the last thing she ever wanted to be. Despite middle sister’s attempts to avoid him—and to keep her mother from finding out about her maybe-boyfriend—rumors spread and the threat of violence lingers. Milkman is a story of the way inaction can have enormous repercussions, in a time when the wrong flag, wrong religion, or even a sunset can be subversive. Told with ferocious energy and sly, wicked humor, Milkman establishes Anna Burns as one of the most consequential voices of our day.

Share Title

List Price
$17.00
ISBN
ISBN
978-1-64445-000-0
Format
Format
Paperback
Publication Date
Publication Date
Subject
Subject
Pages
Pages
360
Trim Size
Trim Size
5.5 x 8.25
Keynote
“Everything about this novel rings true. . . . Original, funny, disarmingly oblique and unique.”—The Guardian (UK)

About the Author

Anna  Burns
Credit: Eleni Stefanou
Anna Burns was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland. She is the author of three novels, including Milkman and Little Constructions, and a novella Mostly Hero. She lives in East Sussex, England.
More by author

Praise

  • Milkman is a strange animal; it asks a lot, but gives something back, too: the electric jolt of a voice that feels utterly, sensationally new.”—Entertainment Weekly (Grade: A­­–)
  • “[Burns’] style powerfully evokes the narrator’s sense of emotional entrapment. . . . Milkman makes a passionate claim for freethinking in a place where monochromatic, us-versus-them ideology prevails.”—USA Today
  • Milkman vibrates with the anxieties of our own era, from terrorism to sexual harassment to the blinding divisions that make reconciliation feel impossible. . . . It’s as though the intense pressure of this place has compressed the elements of comedy and horror to produce some new alloy.”—The Washington Post
     
  • “Brutally intelligent. . . . At its core, Milkman is [a] wildly good and true novel of how living in fear limits people.”NPR.org
Back to Table of Contents