The Death of Francis Bacon

A bold and brilliant short work by the author of Grief is the Thing with Feathers and Lanny.

Madrid. Unfinished. Man dying.

A great painter lies on his deathbed. In seven extraordinary written pictures, untethered from reality, Max Porter translates the explosive final workings of the artist's mind.

Review

A writer of boundless energy and playfulness. -- Max Liu ― i newspaper

A feat of empathy, imagination and literary brio. ― Irish Independent

Very much a living thing . . . He is the supreme word alchemist. ― Sunday Independent

A very moving depiction of a mind in dissolution at the very edge of death. ― Scotland on Sunday

A mirror of Bacon's paintings: tragic, cruelly funny, shallow, repetitive, wild, controlled, grotesque. ― Daily Telegraph

It is the very embodiment of the underfoot, pulpy mash on the floor of the chaos of his studio . . . Exhilarating. ― The Tablet

About the Author

Max Porter is the author of The Death of Francis Bacon, Lanny, a Sunday Times Top 10 bestseller and longlisted for the Booker Prize, and Grief Is the Thing with Feathers, winner of the International Dylan Thomas Prize. He is the recipient of the Sunday Times/Peters Fraser + Dunlop Young Writer of the Year Award. His work has been translated into thirty-three languages.