Divine Magnetic Lands
A Journey in America
- Published: 1 July 2010
- ISBN: 9781407092904
- Imprint: Vintage Digital
- Format: EBook
- Pages: 544
About the author
It's a brave man who takes America itself as his subject. But the success of this book is due precisely to its audacious scale and depth ... O'Grady has a novelist's ear for dialogue and a keen eye for detail. He also has the knack of being able to talk to anyone. Thus we meet businessmen, war veterans, Native Americans, New Orleans rappers and Ku Klux Klansmen, all of them rendered with the care and skill of a miniaturist. He also writes beautifully of landscape... He is equally strong on history, politics and current affairs... There hasn't been a better book about America in years
Daily Telegraph
While a cultural and literary journey, O'Grady's is also a political one, showing a country in denial thanks to an inert media intent on ingratiating itself with the powerful
Guardian
O'Grady remains a noteworthy addition to the tradition {Max} Sebald pioneered, a tradition that mixes travel, history, fiction and introspection into the literary equivalent of a new world
Independent
He is perceptive and knowledgeable and writes clear, easy prose...If you're travelling to the States anytime soon, this is a book to pack
Metro
Entertaining and illuminating
Observer
Fascinating... the real joy of Divine Magnetic Lands lies in his wildly erudite digressions, which range from a passionate denunciation of American academic life to an intriguing gloss on New Orleans Hip-Hop
Sunday Times
As a memoir of the road, O'Grady's work is hugely successful. In many ways it is a literary guide to the US
Irish Times
His routes, and what he brings to it in sensibility and perceptions, are fresh and all his own. O'Grady writes wonderfully well on contemporary America. [..] There is no better guide to the nation.
Duncan Bush, La Voix Luxemburger Wort
Displays both the startling lyricism and the patient reflection that have made his previous fictions so compelling ... Rich in present -tense atmospherics and underpinned by searching enquiry, with a great sense of intimacy and scale ... At once a work of profound personal and collective memory, it's also inevitably a speculative response to September 2001
Time Out
