All Down Darkness Wide

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What to expect

Brought to you by Penguin.

A luminous and haunting memoir from the prize-winning poet - a story of love, heartbreak and coming of age, and a fearless exploration of queer identity and trauma.

When Seán meets Elias, the two fall headlong into a love story. But as Elias struggles with severe depression, the couple comes face-to-face with crisis. Wrestling with this, Seán Hewitt delves deep into his own history, enlisting the ghosts of queer figures and poets before him. From a nineteenth-century cemetery in Liverpool to the pine forests of Gothenburg, Hewitt plumbs the darkness in search of solace and hope.

All Down Darkness Wide is an unflinching meditation on the burden of living in a world that too often sets happiness and queer life at odds, and a tender portrayal of what it's like to be caught in the undertow of a loved one's suffering. By turns devastating and soaring, it is a mesmerising story of heartache and renewal, and a work of rare and transcendent beauty.

© Seán Hewitt 2022 (P) Penguin Audio 2022

Critics Review

  • A stunning meditation on love and heartbreak, this feels like an essential work of the new Irish queer canon

    Sunday Times

  • A remarkable memoir of love and sorrow

    Observer

  • We are witnessing the emergence of a major talent… stunning. A space will need to be made on the Queer Classics shelf

    Irish Independent

  • Intensely original… some of the most beautiful prose I’ve read in years

    The Atlantic

  • Exquisitely written… a fervent appeal for presence and belonging

    Harper's Magazine

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