Finnegan taught in Cape Town, South Africa, in 1981, students boycotted his classes to protest apartheid), environmental issues (he sees great surf spots both created and destroyed by human enterprise) and much more. But also because while it is a book about 'A Surfing Life' - as the subtitle states - it's also about a writer's life and, even more generally, a quester's life, more carefully observed and precisely rendered than any I've read in a long time LA Times Surfing is Topic A here, but it inevitably connects with politics (when Mr. But a particularly remarkable feature of Barbarian Days is the generous yet unsparing portraits of competitive surf friendships that make up a major share of the narrative New York Times Nothing I've read so accurately describes the feeling of being stoked or the despair of being held under.

It is a memoir of dangerous obsession and enchantment.Ī surfer's tale of his quest for self-transcendence is a masterpiece that recalls early James Salter Geoff Dyer, the Observer I don't know anything about surfing, but I was gripped by the intensity of his language, never mind the thrilling recklessness of his behaviour in the waves Olivia Laing, Guardian Best Holiday Reads 2015 There are too many breathtaking, original things in Barbarian Days to do more than mention here - observations about surfing that have simply never been made before, or certainly never so well. Barbarian Days is an old-school adventure story, a social history, an extraordinary exploration of one man's gradual mastering of an exacting and little-understood art. Finnegan describes the edgy yet enduring brotherhood forged among the swell of the surf and recalling his own apprenticeship to the world's most famous and challenging waves, he considers the intense relationship formed between man, board and water.

Barbarian Days is his immersive memoir of a life spent travelling the world chasing waves through the South Pacific, Australia, Asia, Africa and beyond.

William Finnegan first started surfing as a young boy in California and Hawaii.

To devotees, it is something else entirely: a beautiful addiction, a mental and physical study, a passionate way of life. WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR BIOGRAPHY 2016 WINNER OF THE 2016 WILLIAM HILL SPORTS BOOK OF THE YEAR PRIZE Surfing only looks like a sport.

Barbarian days a surfing life review