Pan

A stunning debut … Pan is remarkable for the honesty of its treatment of both mental illness and adolescence. It shows more successfully than any other book I’ve read how these can be experienced as black magic … When we close the book, we find ourselves in a larger world * Guardian, Book of the Day *Pan holds your attention as a sweet-and-sour tale of the no man’s land between childhood and adulthood … In this stylish and unsettling novel, the greatest fear is that inside your head is the only place to be * Observer *Enthralling … A revelation … Strange and original * Financial Times *Deeply impressive … [Clune is] a writer of great intensity and imagination; and Pan takes an old conceit – the disturbed-teen Bildungsroman – then crafts it into something strange, wild, unique * Telegraph *Dazzling … At once startling funny and radiantly – if here and there a little perplexingly – strange … Pan is exhilarating, a pure joy – and a sheer, nerve-curdling terror – from end to end * Washington Post *A true original … A new Michael Clune book is a cause for celebration – Paul MurrayBrilliant … Mind-bending, psychologically intricate, really thrilling – Lauren GroffMichael Clune writes lucid, shrewd, startling prose capable of laying bare pockets of human experience that might otherwise go without words. Pan proves his mesmeric ability to return our world and selves to us made strange and changed; there is no other writer like him – Maggie Nelson[Clune] is writing in the tradition of Proust, Sebald, Jenny Offill, Teju Cole and Nicholson Baker, writers whose eccentricities manifest in singular voices that are propulsive enough without pyrotechnic narratives. Like a great painter, Clune can show us the mind, the world, with just a few well-placed verbs … I could have read 300 pages of just this — Nicholas looking out the window and describing what he saw — and felt that I’d gotten my money’s worth * New York Times *I steal language and ideas from Michael Clune – Ben LernerA delightfully odd coming-of-age story * Esquire *With prose as strange as it is hypnotising, Pan will leave you breathless and wanting for more * Harper’s Bazaar *Nick is a beguiling addition to the literary lineage of child mystics that descends from the stories of JD Salinger … This novel ought to be a breakout for Mr Clune, who captures Nick’s strobing visions with remarkable lucidity and excellent dry humour … Pan is a reawakening * Wall Street Journal *Thoroughly engrossing and … thoroughly entertaining * Times Literary Supplement *Pan is the literary equivalent of a benevolent acid trip, leaving all your mental furniture rearranged * Bookforum *

Michael Clune is the critically acclaimed author of the memoirs Gamelife and White Out, chosen by the New Yorker as one of the best books of 2013. Clune’s work has appeared in Harper’s, the New Yorker, Granta, and elsewhere. He has been recognized by fellowships and awards from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, and the Baker-Nord Center for the Humanities. He is currently the Samuel B. and Virginia C. Knight Professor of the Humanities at Case Western Reserve University and lives in Chagrin Falls, Ohio.

This item is eligible for free returns within 30 days of delivery. See our returns policy for further details.