Man Walks into a Room

Nov 14, 2025 7:29 PM

Author:Nicole Krauss

Award-winning American novelist Nicole Krauss first captivated readers with her groundbreaking debut novel Man Walks into a Room, a novel in which Krauss explores what it is to lose one's identity and what it is to discover what makes us human.

Samson Greene has been missing for eight days when he is discovered wandering through the Nevada desert, 'ragged as a crow' and with no idea who he is. He is rushed to hospital where doctors save his life, but all his memories after the age of twelve have been permanently lost. Now, as he looks around the beautiful apartment he apparently shares with his wife and which is filed with all the souvenirs of a life well lived, Samson feels nothing more than a vague admiration.

In her first novel Nicole Krauss tells the story of a man suddenly liberated from the life he has made, disconnected from the people who have defined him. Withdrawing from a wife he has no memory of loving, Samson plunges weightless into the future. But when he agrees to participate in a revolutionary experiment, what he experiences a revelation of what it means to be human.

'Krauss celebrates the anything-but-simple art of human connection' San Francisco Chronicle

'You'll savour the last page - and be hungry for future work from this talented author' The Washington Post Book World

Nicole Krauss is an American bestselling author who has received international critical acclaim for her first three novels: Great House (shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction 2011), The History of Love (Shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction 2006 and winner of the 2006 Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger) and Man Walks into a Room all of which are available in Penguin paperback.

Reviews

In a spill of vivid and corruscating language... Alan Warner has emerged as a writer of great inventiveness

—— Annie Proulx

Wonderful... humane, unique, a page-turner with a neat series of bombshells at the end

—— Daily Telegraph

Warner provides every nuance of the characters in a sustained tour de force... This is the most profound of Warner's books. His sense of place and atmosphere remains extraordinarily intense

—— Guardian

Wonderful... Humane, unique, a page-turner with a neat series of bombshells at the end

—— Daily Telegraph

Wickedly funny... Warner can combine literary style with go-anywhere demotic humour... Like St Trinians with condoms and male nudity

—— Independent

More wild fun from the outrageously talented bright young thing

—— Scotsman

This is the most profound of Warner's books

—— Guardian

Incredibly impressive debut novel

—— Independent on Sunday

Brilliant ... In a hilarious portrayal of the ups and downs of being wife No.2, The Second Wives Club puts paid to the stereotype of the wicked stepmother once and for all

—— Sun

This is the perfect holiday read but would be just as entertainiing on the commute to work as accompanying you pool side

—— handbag.com

Second wives form a club to bitch about their husbands and in-laws in this compelling read

—— heat

Goodwin does an excellent job...a bleak, clever, complex and utterly compelling thriller with the grip of a pitbull.

—— YORKSHIRE POST

Beautifully written...Idiosyncratic and highly enjoyable

—— GOOD BOOK GUIDE

North London gangland life and a very nasty murder mystery, but this highly compulsive, unputdownable novel is so much more...The events are extraordinary and the finale very disturbing and the reading experience is one of best I've had for a long time.

—— SARAH BROADHURST , THE BOOKSELLER

Intense and deeply disturbing, Sweet Gum is the kind of story you can't help wishing...was strictly confined to the pages of a book. But it's not - this is real life in a modern world: a seedily contemporary world of criminals, lap-dancing, drugs, perversion, prostitution and betrayal. Written by a journalist known for her investigations into the crime underworld, Sweet Gum brilliantly captures the sense of the London streets with a scintillating nastiness that's totally addictive. Unputdownable

—— IRISH EXAMINER

Deliciously bittersweet...vividly evoked...an assured, ambitious and inventive work

—— MSLEXIA

Brisk and wry intelligence...there is a constant wit and genuine sparkle of language at work here

—— SUNDAY TRIBUNE

Her reputation as a gifted novelist will be assured...Sweet Gum balances a visceral portrait of modern evil with an ambitious work on the themes of redemption, love and justice which is both refreshing and strangely nostalgic.

—— THE TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT

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