A Shout in the Ruins - Softcover

Kevin Powers is the author of The Yellow Birds, which won the PEN/Hemingway Award, the Guardian First Book Award, and was a National Book Award Finalist, as well as Letter Composed During a Lull in the Fighting, a collection of poetry. He was born and raised in Richmond, Virginia, graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University, and holds an MFA from the University of Texas at Austin, where he was a Michener Fellow in Poetry. He served in the US Army in 2004 and 2005 in Iraq, where he was deployed as a machine gunner in Mosul and Tal Afar.

"A Shout in the Ruins is confirmation, if it were needed, that Kevin Powers is a writer of rare talent."―Financial Times

"Much as in The March E.L. Doctorow's epic civil war novel, Mr. Powers gives a strong sense of a vast body of humanity caught up in a tumult that still reverberates today... Above all this troubling, stirring book is informed by Mr. Powers's deep understanding of war's complexities, and of how people are broken and shaped by it."―The Economist

"The characters in Powers' bleak, stunning novel are subject to indignities too countless and cruel to name. Like his debut, The Yellow Birds, it's a searing look at the ravages of war, and how violence can shape a nation in ways that may never be fully recoverable.... It won't surprise anyone who's read The Yellow Birds that Powers is a hell of a writer. His use of language in A Shout in the Ruins - inspired, perhaps, by William Faulkner - is nothing short of brilliant, and he connects with his characters in a very real way; he explores their psyches with an uncommon sensitivity."―Michael Schaub, NPR

"Powers brings to Virginia battle scenes the same searing immediacy he brought to his stories of carnage in The Yellow Birds."―Ron Charles, Washington Post

"With a complex structure reminiscent of Faulkner, Powers adroitly weaves his narrative threads together with subtle connections that reinforce his themes of longing for coherence and the continuing effect of the past on the present. An impressive novel of slavery, destruction, and the arduous difficulties of love."―Kirkus, Starred Review

"Some passages in Powers' second novel, following his awarding-winning The Yellow Birds (2012), unfold with a fable's tragic inevitability, while specificity of setting and character, both strikingly described and original, will brand them into the reader's consciousness . . . Beautifully formed sentences express unsettling truths about humanity, yet tendrils of hope emerge, showing how love and kindness can take root in seemingly barren earth."―Booklist

"A masterly meditation on our unbreakable connection to a world predicated on cyclical violence."―Library Journal

"With a complex structure reminiscent of Faulkner, Powers adroitly weaves his narrative threads together with subtle connections that reinforce his themes of longing for coherence and the continuing effect of the past on the present. An impressive novel of slavery, destruction, and the arduous difficulties of love."―Kirkus, starred review

"Guided by a homing instinct for human truths, A Shout in the Ruins is a daring voyage into and out of the darkest era in American history"―Observer

"Suitably unvarnished, but not without moments of beauty or deep emotion. A Shout in the Ruins brushes aside myth and romanticism for a clear-eyed look at American heritage."―Shelf Awareness