William Finnegan

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and William Hill Sports Book of the Year: Barbarian Days is a deeply rendered self-portrait of a lifelong surfer looking for transcendence that recalls early James Salter (Geoff Dyer, Observer)Surfing only looks like a sport. To devotees, it is something else entirely: a beautiful addiction, a mental and physical study, a passionate way of life.New Yorker writer William Finnegan first started surfing as a young boy in California and Hawaii. Barbarian Days is his immersive memoir of a life spent travelling the world chasing waves through the South Pacific, Australia, Asia, Africa and beyond. Finnegan describes the edgy yet enduring brotherhood forged among the swell of the surf; and recalling his own apprenticeship to the worlds most famous and challenging waves, he considers the intense relationship formed between man, board and water.Barbarian Days is an old-school adventure story, a social history, an extraordinary exploration of one mans gradual mastering of an exacting and little-understood art. It is a memoir of dangerous obsession and enchantment. Reading this guy on the subject of waves and water is like reading Hemingway on bullfighting; William Burroughs on controlled substances; Updike on adultery. . . . a coming-of-age story, seen through the gloss resin coat of a surfboardSports IllustratedWinner of the Pulitzer Prize for Biography announced on 18/4/2016.Winner of the William Hill Sports Book of the Year announced on 24/11/2016

Le surf ressemble a Un sport, un passe-temps. Pour ses initiés, c'est bien plus : une addiction merveilleuse, une initiation exigeante, un art de vivre. Élevé en Californie et a Hawaï, William Finnegan a commencé le surf enfant. Après l'université, il a traqué les vagues aux quatre coins du monde, errant des îles Fidji a l'Indonésie, des plages bondées de Los Angeles aux déserts australiens, des townships de Johannesburg aux falaises de l'île de Madère. D'un gamin aventureux, passionné de littérature, il devint un écrivain, un reporter de guerre pour le New Yorker. À travers ses mémoires, il dépeint une vie a contre-courant, a la recherche d'une autre voie, au-dela des canons de la réussite, de l'argent et du carriérisme ; et avec une infinie pudeur se dessine le portrait d'un homme qui aura trouvé dans son rapport a l'océan une échappatoire au monde et une source constante d'émerveillement. Ode a l'enfance, a l'amitié et a la famille, Jours Barbares formule une éthique de vie, entre le paradis et l'enfer des vagues, où l'océan apparaît toujours comme un purgatoire. Un livre rare dont on ne ressort pas tout a fait indemne, entre Hell's Angels de Hunter S. Thompson et Into The Wild de Jon Krakauer.

From the Pulitzer Prizewinning author of Barbarian Days, this narrative nonfiction classic documents the rising inequality and cultural alienation that presaged the crises of today. A status report on the American Dream [that] gets its power [from] the unpredictable, rich specifics of peoples lives.Time [William] Finnegans real achievement is to attach identities to the steady stream of faceless statistics that tell us Americas social problems are more serious than we want to believe.The Washington Post A fifteen-year-old drug dealer in blighted New Haven, Connecticut; a sleepy Texas town transformed by crack; Mexican American teenagers in Washington State, unable to relate to their immigrant parents and trying to find an identity in gangs; jobless young white supremacists in a downwardly mobile L.A. suburb. William Finnegan spent years embedded with families in four communities across the country to become an intimate observer of the lives he reveals in Cold New World. What emerges from these beautifully rendered portraits is a prescient and compassionate book that never loses sight of its subjects humanity. A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK A LOS ANGELES TIMES BEST NONFICTION SELECTIONPraise for Cold New World Unlike most journalists who drop in for a quick interview and fly back out again, Finnegan spent many weeks with families in each community over a period of several years, enough time to distinguish between the kind of short-term problems that can beset anyone and the longer-term systemic poverty and social disintegration that can pound an entire generation into a groove of despair.Los Angeles Times Book Review The most remarkable of William Finnegans many literary gifts is his compassion. Not the fact of it, which we have a right to expect from any personal reporting about the oppressed, but its coolness, its clarity, its ductile strength. . . . Finnegan writes like a dream. His prose is unfailingly lucid, graceful, and specific, his characterization effortless, and the pull of his narrative pure seduction.The Village VoiceFour astonishingly intimate and evocative portraits. . . . All of these stories are vividly, honestly and compassionately told. . . . While Cold New World may make us look in new ways at our young people, perhaps its real goal is to make us look at ourselves.The Philadelphia Inquirer

**Winner of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Autobiography**Included in President Obamas 2016 Summer Reading ListWithout a doubt, the finest surf book Ive ever read . . . The New York Times MagazineBarbarian Days is William Finnegans memoir of an obsession, a complex enchantment. Surfing only looks like a sport. To initiates, it is something else: a beautiful addiction, a demanding course of study, a morally dangerous pastime, a way of life. Raised in California and Hawaii, Finnegan started surfing as a child. He has chased waves all over the world, wandering for years through the South Pacific, Australia, Asia, Africa. A bookish boy, and then an excessively adventurous young man, he went on to become a distinguished writer and war reporter. Barbarian Days takes us deep into unfamiliar worlds, some of them right under our nosesoff the coasts of New York and San Francisco. It immerses the reader in the edgy camaraderie of close male friendships forged in challenging waves. Finnegan shares stories of life in a whites-only gang in a tough school in Honolulu. He shows us a world turned upside down for kids and adults alike by the social upheavals of the 1960s. He details the intricacies of famous waves and his own apprenticeships to them. Youthful follyhe drops LSD while riding huge Honolua Bay, on Mauiis served up with rueful humor. As Finnegans travels take him ever farther afield, he discovers the picturesque simplicity of a Samoan fishing village, dissects the sexual politics of Tongan interactions with Americans and Japanese, and navigates the Indonesian black market while nearly succumbing to malaria. Throughout, he surfs, carrying readers with him on rides of harrowing, unprecedented lucidity. Barbarian Days is an old-school adventure story, an intellectual autobiography, a social history, a literary road movie, and an extraordinary exploration of the gradual mastering of an exacting, little-understood art.

Barbarian Days is William Finnegans memoir of an obsession, a complex enchantment. Surfing only looks like a sport. To initiates, it is something else entirely: a beautiful addiction, a demanding course of study, a morally dangerous pastime, a way of life. Raised in California and Hawaii, Finnegan started surfing as a child. He has chased waves all over the world, wandering for years through the South Pacific, Australia, Asia, Africa. A bookish boy, and then an excessively adventurous young man, he went on to become a distinguished writer and war reporter. Barbarian Days takes us deep into unfamiliar worlds, some of them right under our nosesoff the coasts of New York and San Francisco. It immerses the reader in the edgy camaraderie of close male friendships annealed in challenging waves.Finnegan shares stories of life in a whites only gang in a tough school in Honolulu even while his closest friend was a Hawaiian surfer. He shows us a world turned upside down for kids and adults alike by the social upheavals of the 1960s. He details the intricacies of famous waves and his own apprenticeships to them. Youthful follyhe drops LSD while riding huge Honolua Bay, on Mauiis served up with rueful humor. He and a buddy, their knapsacks crammed with reef charts, bushwhack through Polynesia. They discover, while camping on an uninhabited island in Fiji, one of the worlds greatest waves. As Finnegans travels take him ever farther afield, he becomes an improbable anthropologist: unpicking the picturesque simplicity of a Samoan fishing village, dissecting the sexual politics of Tongan interactions with Americans and Japanese, navigating the Indonesian black market while nearly succumbing to malaria. Throughout, he surfs, carrying readers with him on rides of harrowing, unprecedented lucidity.

Premio Pulitzer 2016; Premio Euskadi De Plata 2017 y Prix America 2017 Años salvajes nos habla de una obsesión, la de William Finnegan con el surf. Finnegan comenzó a hacer surf de pequeño en Hawái y

Premio Pulitzer 2016; Premio Euskadi De Plata 2017 y Prix America 2017Años salvajes nos habla de una obsesión, la de William Finnegan con el surf. Finnegan comenzó a hacer surf de pequeño en Hawái y California. En los años setenta, tras finalizar sus estudios universitarios, su pasion le llevo a dejarlo todo y emprender un viaje iniciatico por Samoa, Indonesia, Fiyi, Java, Australia y Sudafrica.Este precario y singular viaje, por tierras cada vez mas salvajes, y en el que varias veces estuvo al borde de la muerte, termino llevandolo de vuelta a su pais, donde se convertiria en un reconocido escritor y corresponsal de guerra. En Estados Unidos, pese a su nuevo trabajo, su pasion por las olas se mantiene intacta: continua su busqueda de la ola perfecta -la mas grande, la mas rapida, la mas peligrosa- en San Francisco, la Costa Este o Madeira. Una busqueda incesante que es, tambien, la del sentido de su existencia.Galardonado con el premio Pulitzer 2016 y el Euskadi de Plata 2017, Años salvajes es una fascinante historia de aventuras y una autobiografia literaria de primerisimo nivel. Es, ademas, y sin ningun genero de dudas, el mejor libro sobre surf que se haya escrito nunca.En Años salvajes, Finnegan muestra la belleza del mar a quien nunca la ha experimentado asi. Crea el deseo de ir adonde las olas rompen. Jacinto Anton (El Pais) Por mucho que el autor encuentre mil enfoques distintos a la hora de rememorar sus cabalgadas por mares de medio planeta, los intereses del libro son universales: madurar, jugar tus cartas, sufrir, perseverar, equivocarse, perder, renunciar, aprender. Antonio Lozano (Cultura/s, La Vanguardia) Una leyenda dice que hay 40 palabras con las que los esquimales nombran la nieve, pero este periodista y surfista sabe como describir los mil matices en lo que el resto solo verian montañas de agua en movimiento. Para el en una ola cabe el mundo. Elena Hevia (El Periodico) Me gustaria saber que sentira un surfer curtido al remontar estas paginas complices. Yo siento insana envidia. Pero, a partir de ahora, aunque sea desde la orilla de este gran libro, mejor que nada es el contemplar a todos esos sabios demenciales, ahi dentro, cabalgando olas. Rodrigo Fresan (Vanity Fair) El surf no es mas que un dialogo consigo mismo que puede acabar en la muerte. Por eso uno se va a la ola con el mismo impetu que a otro ser humano: tenia dudas, no tenia miedo y no queria que acabase nunca. Manuel Jabois (El Pais) Finnegan logra poner color, textura y sonido a las olas, sin los cliches tipicos de las revistas de surf. Jaime G. Mora (ABC Cultural) Se lee como una novela de aventuras, ambientada sobre todo en suculentos escenarios remotos las islas Fiyi, Indonesia, Tailandia, Madeira, Australia-, donde el autor combina la descripcion de las apasionadas sesiones de surf con las observaciones antropologicas y las relaciones de amistad. Jordi Nopca (Ara) Finnegan ha escrito realmente un libro de surf, claro, pero en el fondo, Años salvajes ofrece una sagaz vision de una infancia americana. Como Hacia rutas salvajes de Krakauer, es una indagacion empatica de lo que ocurre cuando las ideas literarias sobre la libertad y la pureza calan en un joven y lo llevan a los lugares mas reconditos...