What You Were Fighting For

‘Sallis creates vivid images in very few words and his taut, pared-down prose is distinctive and powerful. The result is a small masterpiece’ Susanna Yager, Sunday Telegraph

‘Sallis’s lean mystery and flat-voiced prose are refreshing, even startling. A lovely piece of work’ Paul Skenesay, Washington Post Best Books of the Year

‘The poet Sallis betrays himself on every page with an inordinate desire to capture a nuance of light, essence of cat or waver of a farewell. His prose style is witty, elliptical and heady with image and allusion; his bedrock underlying purpose is nothing less than an exploration of meaning and identity’

LA Times

‘There is a deep poetry that lurks beneath the language, a rhythm that beautifully captures the way real people speak and think’

Doug Johnstone

‘At this point, it may be fair and best to say James Sallis is a genre unto himself’

Craig McDonald

‘One of the most enjoyable and most important writers working today, James Sallis has quietly revolutionised an entire genre of literature’

Sara Gran