Picador Collection

Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2018 Winner of the Goldsmiths Prize 2018 Winner of The Roehampton Poetry Prize 2018 Winner of the 2019 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction ''A beautiful, vigorous and achingly melancholy hymn to the common man that is as unexpected as it is daring.'' --John Banville, Guardian A noir narrative written with the intensity and power of poetry, The Long Take is one of the most remarkable – and unclassifiable – books of recent years. Walker is a D-Day veteran with post-traumatic stress disorder; he can’t return home to rural Nova Scotia, and looks instead to the city for freedom, anonymity and repair. As he moves from New York to Los Angeles and San Francisco we witness a crucial period of fracture in American history, one that also allowed film noir to flourish. The Dream had gone sour but – as those dark, classic movies made clear – the