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The Parade
The Parade
Jul 19, 2025 3:58 PM

Author:Dave Eggers

The Parade

From the bestselling author of The Circle and The Monk of Mokha comes a taut, suspenseful story of two foreigners' role in a nation's fragile peace.

'Tightly written, carefully designed to wrong-foot preconceptions, and astute . . . An intensely gripping story' Evening Standard

An unnamed country is leaving the darkness of a decade at war, and to commemorate the armistice the government commissions a new road connecting two halves of the state.

Two men, foreign contractors from the same company, are sent to finish the highway. While one is flighty and adventurous, wanting to experience the nightlife and people, the other wants only to do the work and go home. But both men must eventually face the absurdities of their positions, and the dire consequences of their presence.

With echoes of J. M. Coetzee and Graham Greene, this timeless novel questions whether we can ever understand another nation's war, and what role we have in forging anyone's peace.

'Certainly his best book since What is the What... The sound of a major writer finding his mature voice' Spectator

Reviews

Tightly written, carefully designed to wrong-foot preconceptions, and astute... An intensely gripping story

—— Evening Standard

Certainly his best book since What is the What, The Parade may well be the sound of a major writer finding his mature voice

—— Spectator

A parable of progress, as told by J.M. Coetzee to Philip K. Dick

—— Richard Flanagan

The Parade is a heartbreaker and a mindbender. It is a novel of ideas that packs an emotional punch that left me reeling. With clear, unadorned prose, Eggers lays bare the costs of war, and of peace

—— Tayari Jones

A readable, atmospheric book

—— The Times

This is a tale for our time, an allegory about intervening in foreign lands without knowledge, and so a nightmare vision of our endless wars.

—— Thomas E. Ricks

In The Parade, the anxiety grows with every page and every mile to reach an ending that turns everything upside down and sends us into the heart of darkness. A minimalistic, merciless novel. A powerful allegory and a painfully concrete contemporary story-Eggers is a true virtuoso of that synthesis.

—— Georgi Gospodinov

Wide-ranging and thoughtful engagement with concepts of power and inequality and whether Western notions of what constitutes 'progress' are always right

—— Literary Review

It partakes of a complex of anxieties about America's role as an affluent superpower of dubious virtue

—— Financial Times

Egger's commitment to social and political issues continues

—— Mail on Sunday

A breath-taking read. Both intimate and sweeping

—— LOUISE HARE, author of THIS LOVELY CITY

Bewitching. I almost felt i'd time-travelled back to Brixton in the 1980s. Highly recommended

—— ALEX WHEATLE, author of BRIXTON ROCK

This book could easily, and mistakenly, be lumped together with other #MeToo novels; work that seems to feed the patriarchy rather than challenge it. Enright, sensibly, doesn’t care if she has your sympathy – she’s too cold, too sharp…so effective. No one understands rage, or the lucid, bleached moments that follow it, better than Enright… If these stories took a physical form, I imagine they would be a well-dressed woman screaming into a silk pillowcase. Which is to say, I love them.

—— Nicole Flattery , London Review of Books

Actress by Anne Enright is a brilliant, lyrical, powerful novel... It's dazzlingly sharp and unnervingly intimate.

—— Danielle McLaughlin , Irish Times *Books of the Year*

Anne Enright's Actress is up there as one of my favourites this year.

—— Elaine Feeney , Irish Times *Books of the Year*

Enright focuses on the complexities of human connection… gradually the subtleties form into something profound and complexwitty and really rather brilliant.

—— Lucy Atkins , Sunday Times

Actress is yet another typically luminous story from Irish author Anne Enrighta raw, tender portrayal of a woman undone by her work, and the men who control it. Seamlessly wrought, it is quite bewitching.

—— Ella Walker , Irish News *Book of the Week*

Anne Enright has an unmistakable diction and a genius for arresting detail. Her novel, a daughter’s account of her once-famous actress mother’s life, is a many-sided thing… Actress is especially good in its evocation of an Ireland and a Dublin that is vanished, highly developed in civility and language, voracious for gossip, sociable, religious, hypocritical, louche, drunken and with a sensitivity to the nuances of speech.

—— Melanie McDonagh , Evening Standard

The narrative dances through plays, boozing and parties… Enright dwells, intriguingly, on passivity, a state common in acting, womanhood and living in Ireland… a winning read.

—— Francesca Carington , Sunday Telegraph, *Novel of the Week*

Actress is a remarkably positive story of female creativity, courage, survival and love… a tour de force of half-concealed effects and slow-burning revelations that splutter suddenly into flame.

—— Clare Pettitt , Times Literary Supplement

Brilliantly and delightfully done… [Actress] is always interesting, and…very enjoyable.

—— Allan Massie , Scotsman

[A] literary force to be reckoned with... [Anne Enright] is one of Ireland's most significant authors - and Actress will be a must-read for many in 2020.

—— Nadine O'Regan , Sunday Business Post

A delicate, knotty reflection on familial relationshipsbrilliant.

—— Dazed Digital, *Books to Look Our For in 2020*

Another compelling effort filled with Enright’s trademark psychological insight.

—— Paul Nolan , HotPress

AbsorbingEnright’s prose is so beautiful that even the shadows are graced with flickers of light… Actress is an elegant novel.

—— Eithne Farry , Daily Express

A warm and generous portrait of a relationship between a daughter and her famous motherskilfully interwoven with Norah’s own story, and the twists and turns of her own life and marriage.

—— Hugh Linehan , Irish Times

Gripping drama and a pitch-perfect evocation of the stages of Seventies Dublin and London’s West End.

—— Stephanie Cross , Daily Mail, *Books to Look Our For in 2020*

A potent brew of fame, sexual power, hypocrisy and bad men.

—— Hephzibah Anderson , Mail on Sunday

A powerful novel.

—— Metro

Actress is a fabric of musings… The characters in Enright’s novels are absorbing because they seem recognisable in an unassuming way: they’re as lovely, boring and complex as the people outside the books.

—— Cal Revely-Calder , Daily Telegraph

Enright, herself a former actress, captures all the comedy and pathos that comes from living the strange, unreal life of an actor.

—— Charlotte Heathcote , Sunday Express

A raw, tender portrayal of a woman undone by her work, and the men who control it. Seamlessly wrought, it is quite bewitching.

—— UK Press Syndication

Actress is a poignant tale of the vicissitudes of fame and its effects on the loved ones of the famous.

—— Economist

Compelling.

—— James Moran , Tablet

The next stage in an illustrious writing careerstuffed full of dark wit, memorable lines and striking images.

—— Sarah Hughes , Scotsman

Enright is to Dublin as Didion is to California.

—— Ana Kinsella , AnOther

I've just started reading Anne Enright's Actress. I very much enjoyed her previous novel, The Green Road. This one has glorious lines even in the opening pages.

—— Tracey Thorn , i

I would definitely recommend Actress by Anne Enright, it is her at her very best.

—— Marjorie Brennan , Irish Examiner

Few reviews said how absolutely hilarious [Actress] is. Enright skewers beautifully those creepy provincial aesthetes of Dublin of the sixties and seventies.

—— Conor O'Callaghan , Irish Times

Enright is formidable in combining the concrete detail of lives – think of the extraordinary array of sibling portraits in her last novel, The Green Roadwith an acute understanding of the inchoate lives of families: the push and pull of loyalty; the projection of desires; the smothering of disappointment and unhappiness. Here she conjures [a] rollicking story.

—— Alex Clark , Oldie *Novel of the Month*

A rich, impressively imagined work about a stage and screen star who may never have existed but seems considerably more human than many real-life figures as seen through their own eyes or those of any but the finest biographers.

—— Philip Fisher , British Theatre Guide

This story is about mothers and daughters, but also secrets in families and women in Ireland. It's an easy read, with a quintessentially Irish tone... It's brilliant.

—— Jess Phillips , Observer

Anne Enright's brilliant novel is a darkly glittering account of the cost to both the mother and her daughter of Katherine's complicated fame.

—— Jane Shilling , Daily Mail

A gem from a former Booker winner.

—— Susie Mesure , i, *Summer Books of 2021*

Anne Enright['s]...writing is simply glorious. Comedy and tragedy in one.

—— Mary Lawson , Daily Mail, *Books of the Year*
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