The Fighter

‘Like living language, literary modes have both a formal and a demotic form. What we call noir is high tragedy brought down to the forgotten and disavowed… With The Fighter, cleaving to tradition, Michael Farris Smith brings that tradition brilliantly into the present.’

James Sallis

‘Smith’s narrative manages to stay just ahead of disintegration, and does so with style, lush prose, and storytelling assurance… The Fighter is a triumph. It confirms Smith’s status as one of our foremost authors in the Rough South, Grit Lit tradition established by Crews, Larry Brown, Tom Franklin, William Gay and the towering Cormac McCarthy’

Clarion Ledger

‘This resourceful writer weds violence, despair, and glimmers of hope during a few tense days in the life of a once-legendary bare-knuckle fighter… A gifted storyteller who parses battered dreams and the legacies of abandonment with a harsh realism that is both saddening and engaging’

Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

‘Equal parts brutal and beautiful and harrowing, it’s left me totally bereft’

Author of Tall Oaks and All The Wicked Girls

‘Smith’s fiction is full of hard people in tough situations, but his obvious love of language and innately rhythmic prose lift his stories to a higher level’

Doug Johnstone , The Big Issue

‘Michael Farris Smith is continuing the southern gothic tradition of William Gay and Flannery O’Connor. Drenched in sorrow and written with complex language, The Fighter moves toward a conclusion both surprising and inevitable’

Chris Offutt