A Little Life

SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2015

"Astonishing and unsettling ... A masterwork" San Francisco Chronicle

"A book that demands to be read." Wall Street Journal

The million copy bestseller, A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara, is an immensely powerful and heartbreaking novel of brotherly love and the limits of human endurance.

When four graduates from a small Massachusetts college move to New York to make their way, they're broke, adrift, and buoyed only by their friendship and ambition. There is kind, handsome Willem, an aspiring actor; JB, a quick-witted, sometimes cruel Brooklyn-born painter seeking entry to the art world; Malcolm, a frustrated architect at a prominent firm; and withdrawn, brilliant, enigmatic Jude, who serves as their centre of gravity. Over the decades, their relationships deepen and darken, tinged by addiction, success, and pride. Yet their greatest challenge, each comes to realize, is Jude himself, by midlife a terrifyingly talented litigator yet an increasingly broken man, his mind and body scarred by an unspeakable childhood, and haunted by what he fears is a degree of trauma that he'll not only be unable to overcome - but that will define his life forever.

ACCLAIM FOR A LITTLE LIFE

Shortlisted for the Baileys Prize for Women's Fiction 2016
Winner of The Kirkus Prize 2015
Finalist for the National Book Awards 2015

"Transporting . . . A Little Life is not to be missed." Evening Standard

"The first must-read novel of the year" Kirkus

"A singularly profound and moving work . . . It's not often that you read a book of this length and find yourself thinking "I wish it was longer" but Yanagihara takes you so deeply into the lives and minds of these characters that you struggle to leave them behind." The Times

"Makes for near-hypnotically compelling reading, a vivid, hyperreal portrait of human existence that demands intense emotional investment . . . An astonishing achievement: a novel of grand drama and sentiment, but it's a canvas Yanagihara has painted with delicate, subtle brushstrokes." Independent

"Utterly compelling . . . quite an extraordinary novel. It is impossible to put down . . . And it is almost impossible to forget." Daily Express