The Evening Road

A strange, dazzling novel, as audacious as it is lyrical, that hauls up insight, sorrow, and even – somehow – wit from the well of American history.

Emma Donogue

In this startling and unforgettable novel, the characters explode off the page like fireworks on a very dark and disturbing night. Days later I’m still thinking about them, still hearing the cadence of Hunt’s poetic language, and still wondering which is more enduring, the darkness or the light.

Charlotte Rogan, author of The Lifeboat

Wow! Beautifully crafted, seductive, evocative language and a story that punches you in the gut and lays you low and yet leaves you wanting more. It’s rich, deep, dark, harrowing stuff and it does what all great fiction does – it lays ahold of the heart and won’t let go. You’ll think about this book for weeks, if not years, to come.

Daniel James Brown, author of The Boys in the Boat

Engrossing...intriguing... Hunt finds history or the big events useful framing devices, but he is more interested in how words can do justice to single players and life's fraught moments... He is strange, challenging, and a joy to read.

Kirkus Reviews (STARRED review)

The Evening Road is a vivid, disturbing book, able to subvert itself in half a line, constantly challenging the reader’s expectations. Its ghost map is quickly established in the reader’s head, and as the characters fade into the margin of the final page, it is as if an inner landscape has altered. It is mature, accomplished, impressive.

Hilary Mantel

Hunt is an irresistibly inventive writer, slipping easily from crackling dialogue to dreamy lyricism… The Evening Road is a novel of depth and beauty, a meditation on history that speaks eloquently to the present, a book that sidles up behind you until you can feel its hot breath on the back of your neck.

Clare Clark, Literary Review

A story told from three viewpoints about the banality of evil, and what ordinary people must accept for that evil to prosper… One of the finest novels so far this year

John Burnside, Guardian

[An] excellent, dreamlike novel.

Claire Allfree, Metro

An astute investigation into the nature of evildoing

Financial Times, Books of the Year

Arresting and disturbing… a haunting novel packed with vivid scenes and memorable characters

Simon Shaw, The Mail on Sunday