The Long Take
by Robin Robertson
Last on the list is perhaps the most unusual: Robin Robertson’s novel The Long Take, which is written entirely in verse. Though Robertson is Scottish, The Long Take is a “melancholy love song to America” and a “masterful epic” to boot, writes The Guardian. Winner of the Roehampton Poetry Prize, the work stars Walter, a PTSD-suffering veteran of D-Day who travels throughout postwar America. “The Long Take is like a film noir on the page,” writes the Man Booker panel. “A book about a man and a city in shock, it’s an extraordinary evocation of the debris and ongoing destruction of war even in times of peace.”
Originally Published
