All Down Darkness Wide

A Memoir

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Summary

A luminous memoir from the prize-winning poet - a story of love, heartbreak and coming of age, and a tender exploration of queer identity.

'Beautiful' Colm Tóibín
'Rapturous' New York Times
'Extraordinary' Observer
'Stunning' Sunday Times

When Seán meets Elias, the two fall headlong into a love story. But as Elias struggles with severe depression, the couple comes face to face with crisis.

Wrestling with this, Seán Hewitt delves deep into his own history, enlisting the ghosts of queer figures and poets before him. From a nineteenth-century cemetery in Liverpool to the pine forests of Gothenburg, Hewitt plumbs the darkness in search of solace and hope.

All Down Darkness Wide is a mesmerising story of heartache and renewal, and a fearless exploration of a world that too often sets happiness and queer life at odds.

WINNER OF THE ROONEY PRIZE FOR IRISH LITERATURE 2022

'Extraordinarily beautiful... the best new work of non-fiction I've read in years' Sarah Perry

'Rigorous and sensual... Hewitt has forged a life-enhancing memoir' Spectator

Reviews

A stunning meditation on love and heartbreak, this feels like an essential work of the new Irish queer canon
Sunday Times

About the author

Seán Hewitt

Seán Hewitt was born in 1990. His debut poetry collection, Tongues of Fire, received the Laurel Prize and was shortlisted for many awards, including the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award. All Down Darkness Wide, his memoir, was shortlisted for Biography of the Year at the An Post Irish Book Awards and for the Foyles Non-Fiction Book of the Year, and he has collaborated with the artist Luke Edward Hall on 300,000 Kisses: Tales of Queer Love from the Ancient World. His second collection of poetry is Rapture’s Road. Hewitt lectures at Trinity College Dublin, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. In 2022, he was awarded the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature.

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