COVER PAGE

PRAISE

PRAISE FOR DAVID VANN

AQUARIUM

‘David Vann has been one of the most thrilling discoveries of the past decade or so.’

STEPHEN ROMEI

‘[Vann] is the real thing—a mature, risk-taking and fantastically adept fiction writer who dares go to the darkest places, explore their most appalling corners.’

OBSERVER

‘One of the most darkly talented and unsettling writers working today.’

GUARDIAN

‘Vann’s provocative prose is filled with a sense of wonder and beauty, even when the lives he describes are tragic.’

LA TIMES

DIRT

‘David Vann is renowned for his tough, uncompromising fiction and his third novel, Dirt, is no exception…

Reading Dirt is akin to rubber-necking at a car crash—it’s disturbing but you just can’t look away.’

THE BIG ISSUE

‘A rising star in the literary landscape.’

BRISBANE SUNDAY MAIL

ALSO BY

ALSO BY DAVID VANN

FICTION

Aquarium

Goat Mountain

Dirt

Caribou Island

Legend of a Suicide

NONFICTION

Last Day on Earth: A Portrait of the NIU School Shooter

A Mile Down: The True Story of a Disastrous Career at Sea

AUTHOR BIO

David Vann is an internationally bestselling author, published in twenty-one languages. He is the winner of fifteen prizes and his books have appeared on seventy-five Best Books lists in a dozen countries. He is a professor at the University of Warwick in England and honorary professor at the University of Franche-Comté in France. David lives in New Zealand.

davidvann.com

AUTHOR’S NOTE

Author’s Note

I was lucky to be the captain of an ancient Egyptian sailing ship, a reconstruction with archaeologist Cheryl Ward for a French film that airs periodically on NOVA, titled Building Pharaoh’s Ship. I was there for the construction, designed the rigging, and sailed it in the Red Sea, recreating voyages to the Land of Punt during Hatshepsut’s reign 3,500 years ago. That type of Egyptian ship is what the Argo most likely would have been, so I described my own experiences as I wrote this voyage of the Argonauts with Jason and Medea. I also sailed my own boat through all the Greek islands, beginning in Croatia and ending in Turkey, to visit Korinth and many other archaeological sites. Unlike Euripides’ Medea, which is set in his time 800 years later, Bright Air Black is set during Medea’s time, 3,250 years ago, following the archaeological evidence and never straying from realism (there are no centaurs or chariots rising into the air). The time period is what the Greeks considered the beginning, but it’s really the end of an older world, the fall of the Bronze Age, and Medea is a leftover, a threat from this earlier time.

EPIGRAPHS

Medea bade them land and propitiate Hecate with sacrifice. Now all that the maiden prepared for offering the sacrifice may no man know, and may my soul not urge me to sing thereof. Awe restrains my lips.

—The Argonautica, Apollonius (translation R. C. Seaton)