Ten top books about Manchester

Adam O'Riordan's first collection of poems In the Flesh won a Somerset Maugham Award. His new collection A Herring Famine will be published in 2017 along with his debut book of stories, The Burning Ground. O’Riordan was born in Manchester in 1982 and read English at Oxford University. He is Lecturer in Poetry Writing at the Writing School at Manchester Metropolitan University.

One of the author's top ten books about Manchester, as shared at the Guardian:

The Emigrants by WG Sebald

Sebald, before his untimely death, was rumoured by many to be in line for the Nobel prize. His Manchester of the 1960s is one wearied and worn down; a stark, near-deserted cityscape that the narrator wanders through disconsolately until meeting the painter Max Ferber. For readers who grew up in the south of the city, there’s a particular thrill in seeing its neighbourhoods subject to Sebald’s attention. Travelling from the airport early one morning, the narrator passes through “the not unhandsome suburbs of Gatley, Northenden and Didsbury”.

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Emigrants is among Rabih Alameddine's six favorite novels.

--Marshal Zeringue