“Fully engaging, well-written, very imaginative . . . A wonderful debut.” — Irish Times “When you read a novel cover to cover in one day, you know it’s something exceptional.” — John Boyne, author of The Boy in the Striped Pajamas Outside an east Belfast mission hall, pastor and family man Samuel Orr meets Anna, a young Beckett scholar. They embark on an intense, passionate affair, their connection both intellectual and erotic. When Anna falls pregnant, the affair is revealed. The repercussions are slow to emerge but inescapable, and the fallout, when it finally comes, is shocking. Over thirty years later Sam, their son, is in New York, living a steady, guarded life, his childhood and family safely abandoned. But when the past once more crashes into his life, he is forced to confront the fears he has kept close all these years. “Brilliantly written throughout . . . With tight, dispassionate, superbly controlled prose, Harrison channels the spirit of Don DeLillo or Camus.” — Irish Independent “Harrison’s elegant prose and deeply felt characters create a novel with a fiercely beating heart.” — Kirkus Reviews “Written with burning intensity . . . Powerful.” — Daily Mail

The First Day

Literature & Fiction

Harrison, Phil

United States

Harper-perennial

Set in Ireland and New York, a debut novel about an affair and its explosive consequences—the sins of the father visited on the son in unexpected and irreversible ways Outside an east Belfast mission hall, pastor and family man Samuel Orr meets Anna, a young Beckett scholar. They embark on an intense, passionate affair, their connection fueled by their respective love of Christ and Beckett. When Anna falls pregnant the affair is revealed. The repercussions are slow to emerge but inescapable, and the fallout when it finally comes is shocking, cruel, and violent. Over thirty years later Sam, their son, is in New York, living a steady, guarded life, his childhood and family safely abandoned. But the sins of the fathers are visited often on their children, and the past crashes into his life as violently as in his youth. He is forced to confront the fears he has kept close all these years. The First Day is the story of an affair and its consequences—on family and on faith. It is an intense, questioning novel of the search to understand our origins and to free ourselves from the burdens of our early years. It's a stunning debut, meditative and compelling, incantatory, at times devastating and always mesmerizing.

Houghton, mifflin, harcourt

Inside the Hermit Kingdomcharts the history of Albanian football from 1945 to 1991, when the country was ruled by modern Europe's most brutal and oppressive regime. The book features a chronology of Albanian football history interspersed with iconic games that shaped the nation's favourite sport. It details the matchday experience in Stalinist Albania, tells the story of a league footballer during the regime years and charts the growth of street football in Hoxhaist Tirana. You'll read about the demise of 'The Party' and Stalinism in Albania and the effects their disintegration had on football, peering beyond 1991 into a future riddled with conflict, uncertainty and, oddly, hope. The era is brought to life by the accounts of Albanians who lived through it, which capture the importance of football to a populace starved of any other source of communal enjoyment. The otherworldliness and innate cruelty of the Stalinist regime provide a terrifying backdrop to their tales.

Inside the Hermit Kingdom: Football Stories from Stalinist Albania

Sports & Outdoors

Soccer

Pitch Publishing Ltd

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Books by Harrison, Phil