Barbarian Days by William Finnegan

Barbarian Days by William Finnegan

**Winner of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Autobiography**

Included in President Obama's 2016 Summer Reading List

"Without a doubt, the finest surf book I've ever read . . . " --The New York Times Magazine

Barbarian Days is William Finnegan's 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 noses--off 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 folly--he drops LSD while riding huge Honolua Bay, on Maui--is served up with rueful humor. As Finnegan's 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.

Cold New World, A Complex Conflict, Dateline Soweto, Crossing the Line, and Barbarian Days are among William Finnegan's works. He's been a finalist for the National Magazine Award twice and has earned a slew of journalism honors, including two Overseas Press Club awards since 2009. The Pulitzer Prize for Autobiography was awarded to Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life in 2016. He has been a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1987 and currently resides in Manhattan.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780143109396
ISBN 10	0143109391
Title	Barbarian Days
Author	William Finnegan
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Penguin Putnam Inc
Year published	2016-04-26
Number of pages	464
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.