# Barbarian Days

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![Barbarian Days](https://quivercdn.com/covers/corsair/william-finnegan/barbarian-days_978-14-7215-141-4.jpg?v=2026-05-17%2018%3A27%3A18)

- Authors: [William Finnegan](https://www.bookquiver.com/william-finnegan)
- Language: en_GB
- Published: 2015-08-06

## Description

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and William Hill Sports Book of the Year: Barbarian Days is a deeply rendered self-portrait of a lifelong surfer looking for transcendence 'that recalls early James Salter' (Geoff Dyer, Observer) Surfing only looks like a sport. To devotees, it is something else entirely: a beautiful addiction, a mental and physical study, a passionate way of life. New Yorker writer William Finnegan first started surfing as a young boy in California and Hawaii. Barbarian Days is his immersive memoir of a life spent travelling the world chasing waves through the South Pacific, Australia, Asia, Africa and beyond. 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 an old-school adventure story, a social history, an extraordinary exploration of one man's gradual mastering of an exacting and little-understood art. It is a memoir of dangerous obsession and enchantment. 'Reading this guy on the subject of waves and water is like reading Hemingway on bullfighting; William Burroughs on controlled substances; Updike on adultery. . . . a coming-of-age story, seen through the gloss resin coat of a surfboard' Sports Illustrated Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Biography announced on 18/4/2016. Winner of the William Hill Sports Book of the Year announced on 24/11/2016

## Editions

### Barbarian Days

- Publisher: corsair
- ISBN: 978-14-7215-141-4
- Published: 2016-05-10
- Language: en_GB

### Barbarian Days

- Publisher: Penguin Books
- ISBN: 978-01-4310-939-6
- Pages: 464
- Published: 2016-04-26
- Language: en_US

### Barbarian Days

- Publisher: corsair
- Medium: ebook
- ISBN: 978-14-7215-140-7
- Published: 2015-08-06
- Language: en_GB