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‘Kennard’s distinctive voice – surreal, funny, anxious, always overthinking, and cringingly self-deprecating – has made him one of the most widely liked and imitated British poets’ – Tristram Fane Saunders, TLS
None of the Old Testament prophets were especially happy or confident in their calling, but Jonah was the only one who rejected it outright, disobeying direct instruction from God and literally running away. In The Book of Jonah, Luke Kennard transforms the unique and awkward position Jonah’s story occupies in scripture – part dream, part joke, part provocation – into a madcap picaresque which marries the sacred and the absurd.
Though Jonah’s encounter with the whale is most commonly interpreted as the story of a reluctant prophet being punished by his maker, Kennard’s Jonah is more wily business traveler than seer. Taking his instruction instead from non-governmental organizations, arts development agencies, and public-relations gurus, this Jonah keeps relentlessly busy, accepting any assignment that will take him further away from Nineveh and drown out the word of God in his ears.
On his travels, he meets wandering writers, fixers, artists, and consultants, but nobody who can give him a sense of what his work might be beyond a five-star capitalist purgatory in a series of exotic locations. What would it mean to be a prophet – or even a false prophet – in this world?
Addressing the decimation of arts funding, the emptiness of the hero’s journey, and a literary culture viewed by society with cynicism, ignorance, and apathy, The Book of Jonah is a blistering poetry collection by the Forward Prize-winning author of Notes on the Sonnets.
'Brilliant . . . Deadly serious in the way only the playfully comic can be, the poems here are liable to leave you both smiling and wincing in the same breath' – Rishi Dastidar, Telegraph
'A fun, challenging read – like being entertained at the pub by a tipsy Theology professor' – Telegraph, Books of the Year
Pages: 176, Year of Publication: 1216, Dimensions: 15.4x15.4cm
Manufacturer
- Publisher
- Macmillan Publishers
- Language
- English
- Subtitle
- -
- Cover
- Soft
- Number of Pages
- 96
- Release Date
- 09/12/2025
- Publication Date
- 2025
- Dimensions
- 15.2x19.7 cm
- ISBN-13
- 9781035069262
Important information
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