Pan
3499
Pan
3499
An intense and funny coming-of-age debut novel about the magical thinking of youth and the mystery of adolescence Nicholas has plenty of reasons to feel unstable- he's fifteen, the child of divorced parents, living with his absent dad in the bleak Chicago suburbs, and an outsider at school. Then, one day in geometry class, he forgets how to breathe. The doctor says it's just panic, but Nicholas suspects that his real problem might not be a psychiatric one- maybe the Greek god Pan is trapped inside his body. As his paradigm for his own consciousness crumbles, Nicholas and his friends hunt for answers why - in art, music and literature - as they reach for a life beyond the confines of where they've grown up and what's expected of them. Pan takes us inside the human psyche, where we risk discovering that the forces controlling our inner lives could be more alien than we want to let ourselves believe.
Pan holds your attention as a sweet-and-sour tale of the no man’s land between childhood and adulthood . . . In this stylish and unsettling novel, the greatest fear is that inside your head is the only place to be * Observer *
Deeply impressive . . . [Clune is] a writer of great intensity and imagination; and Pan takes an old conceit – the disturbed-teen Bildungsroman – then crafts it into something strange, wild, unique * Telegraph *
A true original . . . A new Michael Clune book is a cause for celebration -- Paul Murray
Brilliant . . . Mind-bending, psychologically intricate, really thrilling -- Lauren Groff
Michael Clune writes lucid, shrewd, startling prose capable of laying bare pockets of human experience that might otherwise go without words. Pan proves his mesmeric ability to return our world and selves to us made strange and changed; there is no other writer like him -- Maggie Nelson
[Clune] is writing in the tradition of Proust, Sebald, Jenny Offill, Teju Cole and Nicholson Baker, writers whose eccentricities manifest in singular voices that are propulsive enough without pyrotechnic narratives. Like a great painter, Clune can show us the mind, the world, with just a few well-placed verbs . . . I could have read 300 pages of just this — Nicholas looking out the window and describing what he saw — and felt that I’d gotten my money’s worth * New York Times *
I steal language and ideas from Michael Clune -- Ben Lerner
A delightfully odd coming-of-age story * Esquire *
With prose as strange as it is hypnotising, Pan will leave you breathless and wanting for more * Harper’s Bazaar *
Nick is a beguiling addition to the literary lineage of child mystics that descends from the stories of JD Salinger . . . This novel ought to be a breakout for Mr Clune, who captures Nick’s strobing visions with remarkable lucidity and excellent dry humour . . . Pan is a reawakening * Wall Street Journal *
Pan is the literary equivalent of a benevolent acid trip, leaving all your mental furniture rearranged * Bookforum *
A staggering coming-of-age novel . . . Wild, strange and savagely funny * Service95 *
[Pan] has literary circles buzzing . . . Rendered in dazzling prose, Clune’s debut novel paints a luminous portrait of the unique psychosis that growing up in suburbia can foster * Bustle *
A remarkable and singular novel whose sensitivity to the texture of experience opens up the possibility of a fresh perceptiveness in the reader. It’s tender and searching, an addictive philosophical quest. I loved it with all my heart. -- Chetna Maroo, Booker-shortlisted author of WESTERN LANE
Details
ISBN13: 9781911717621
Format: Paperback / softback
Number of Pages: 336
Edition:
Publication Date: 29 Jul 2025
Publisher: Vintage Publishing
Publication City, Country: London, United Kingdom
Dimensions (cm): 21.2(H)x13.2(L)x2.3(W)336
Weight (gm): 336
Author Biography
Michael Clune is the critically acclaimed author of the memoirs Gamelife and White Out, chosen by the New Yorker as one of the best books of 2013. Clune's work has appeared in Harper's, the New Yorker, Granta and elsewhere, while he has been recognised by fellowships and awards from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, the Baker-Nord Center for the Humanities, and others. He is currently the Samuel B. and Virginia C. Knight Professor of the Humanities at Case Western Reserve University and lives in Cleveland Heights, Ohio.Reviews
A stunning debut . . . Pan is remarkable for the honesty of its treatment of both mental illness and adolescence. It shows more successfully than any other book I’ve read how these can be experienced as black magic . . . When we close the book, we find ourselves in a larger world * Guardian, *Book of the Day* *Pan holds your attention as a sweet-and-sour tale of the no man’s land between childhood and adulthood . . . In this stylish and unsettling novel, the greatest fear is that inside your head is the only place to be * Observer *
Deeply impressive . . . [Clune is] a writer of great intensity and imagination; and Pan takes an old conceit – the disturbed-teen Bildungsroman – then crafts it into something strange, wild, unique * Telegraph *
A true original . . . A new Michael Clune book is a cause for celebration -- Paul Murray
Brilliant . . . Mind-bending, psychologically intricate, really thrilling -- Lauren Groff
Michael Clune writes lucid, shrewd, startling prose capable of laying bare pockets of human experience that might otherwise go without words. Pan proves his mesmeric ability to return our world and selves to us made strange and changed; there is no other writer like him -- Maggie Nelson
[Clune] is writing in the tradition of Proust, Sebald, Jenny Offill, Teju Cole and Nicholson Baker, writers whose eccentricities manifest in singular voices that are propulsive enough without pyrotechnic narratives. Like a great painter, Clune can show us the mind, the world, with just a few well-placed verbs . . . I could have read 300 pages of just this — Nicholas looking out the window and describing what he saw — and felt that I’d gotten my money’s worth * New York Times *
I steal language and ideas from Michael Clune -- Ben Lerner
A delightfully odd coming-of-age story * Esquire *
With prose as strange as it is hypnotising, Pan will leave you breathless and wanting for more * Harper’s Bazaar *
Nick is a beguiling addition to the literary lineage of child mystics that descends from the stories of JD Salinger . . . This novel ought to be a breakout for Mr Clune, who captures Nick’s strobing visions with remarkable lucidity and excellent dry humour . . . Pan is a reawakening * Wall Street Journal *
Pan is the literary equivalent of a benevolent acid trip, leaving all your mental furniture rearranged * Bookforum *
A staggering coming-of-age novel . . . Wild, strange and savagely funny * Service95 *
[Pan] has literary circles buzzing . . . Rendered in dazzling prose, Clune’s debut novel paints a luminous portrait of the unique psychosis that growing up in suburbia can foster * Bustle *
A remarkable and singular novel whose sensitivity to the texture of experience opens up the possibility of a fresh perceptiveness in the reader. It’s tender and searching, an addictive philosophical quest. I loved it with all my heart. -- Chetna Maroo, Booker-shortlisted author of WESTERN LANE