Man of Bone & Burridge Unbound
A junior Canadian
diplomat, kidnapped
and tortured in tiny
Santa Irene, fights to
hang on to a semblance
of his humanity.
Home in Canada, both
fractured and
stengthened by his
ordeal, Bill Burridge
looks overseas again
in an effort to heal.
Ottawa Book Award 1999
Finalist Trillium Book
Award 1999
Finalist Torgi Talking Books
Award 1999
Ottawa Book
Award 2001
Finalist Giller
Prize 2000
Globe and Mail Notable
Book 2000
"Cumyn's powerful third novel
grips us with techniques as old
as Shakespeare, sharp as Waugh,
contemporary as Egoyan....
Man of Bone is technically
accomplished, a powerful,
moving meditation on
brutality, eroticism, love, pain,
god, and humanity."
Quill & Quire
"Cumyn...is mesmerizing in this
new third novel, which
magnificently enshrines spirit
beyond the limitations
of the physical body."
The Globe and Mail
"Man of Bone reads like an
unusual, haunting thriller.
Despite its brutal descriptions of
physical torture and its insight
into a mind confronting death,
this is a novel full of life.... The
novel's pacing, right down to its
heart-wrenching conclusion, is taut,
thrilling. Stripped to its human core,
this is prose meant to survive."
Event
"Burridge Unbound is a story about
the fragility of life, life pushed to the
edge. It is a brilliant depiction of a man
at a precarious crossroads. The novel
is breathtaking, almost impossible to
put down. Alan Cumyn is a writer of
remarkable talent."
Alistair Macleod
"What happens to a man, a rather
ordinary Canadian diplomat, who is
taken hostage by terrorists in a distant
Pacific island and kept prisoner, starved
and tortured in a black box for nine
months? What happens to his mind,
his body, his emotions, his sense of self?
That's what Alan Cumyn sets out to
explore in this rivetting and extremely
well written novel."
Bronwyn Drainie