Yellow Birds

WINNER OF THE GUARDIAN FIRST BOOK AWARDNATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALISTNEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER and BOOK OF THE YEAR'Extraordinary . . . a must-read' Guardian'A masterpiece . . . a classic' The Times'A stunning achievement' Sunday Times'Remarkable . . . every line is a defiant assertion of the power of beauty to revivify' Hilary Mantel'Harrowing, inexplicably beautiful, and utterly, urgently necessary' Ann PatchettAn unforgettable depiction of the psychological impact of war, by a young Iraq veteran and poet, THE YELLOW BIRDS is already being hailed as a modern classic. It is also a story of love, of great courage, and of extraordinary human survival.Everywhere John looks, he sees Murph.He flinches when cars drive past. His fingers clasp around the rifle he hasn't held for months. Wide-eyed strangers praise him as a hero, but he can feel himself disappearing.Back home after a year in Iraq, memories swarm around him: bodies burning in the crisp morning air. Sunlight falling through branches; bullets kicking up dust; ripples on a pond wavering like plucked strings. The promise he made, to a young man's mother, that her son would be brought home safely.Written with profound emotional insight, especially into the effects of a hidden war on families at home, THE YELLOW BIRDS is one of the most haunting, true and powerful novels of our time.A NEW YORK TIMES, INDEPENDENT, TIMES, TLS, EVENING STANDARD, SUNDAY EXPRESS, GUARDIAN, SCOTSMAN, SUNDAY HERALD, IRISH TIMES BOOK OF THE YEARKevin Powers' new literary thriller, A Line in the Sand, will be published by Sceptre in August 2023.

Extraordinary . . . beautifully accomplished. The mark of an artist of the first order . . . a must-read book., A masterpiece ... a classic., A stunning achievement - visceral [and] poignant., 'Remarkable for its intensity of both feeling and expression. In this book about death, every line is a defiant assertion of the power of beauty to revivify, whether beauty shows itself in nature or (later) in art., 'The best book I have read this year'

Kevin Powers' first novel, The Yellow Birds, won the Guardian First Book Award, the PEN/Hemingway Award, and was a National Book Award Finalist. His poetry collection, Letter Composed During a Lull in the Fighting, was shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize and Forward Prize. His second novel, A Shout in the Ruins, was published in 2018.Born and raised in Richmond, Virginia, he graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University and holds an MFA from the University of Texas at Austin, where he was a Michener Fellow in Poetry. He served in the US Army in 2004 and 2005 in Mosul and Tal Afar, Iraq.