Silverback

Visceral and unpredictable, Silverback is a novel doing what novels do best: it plunges beneath catch-all labels like ‘toxic masculinity’ to explore the complicated and mercurial humanity of flesh and blood human beings. Harrison’s characters are fathers and sons, husbands and friends, mentors and ingenues, all from different walks of life, all vulnerable in their power, and all so starved for connection that tenderness and violence have become indistinguishable. Told with real intelligence, skill and compassion, this is a seriously impressive novel – Colin WalshSilverback is both a murder mystery and a knottily impressive portrait of a peculiarly Ulster form of masculinity – John Self * Sunday Telegraph *Highly original … Many novels about The Troubles depict the horrors that take place on the street. This one, set at an intriguing remove, exposes the more ambiguous horrors gnawing within * Daily Mail *a dark and unnerving tale of heartless fathers and damaged sons told in a spare, clinical tone … Harrison writes with great conviction, his story moving forward with tragic insight – John Boyne * Irish Times *

Phil Harrison is a writer and filmmaker. His debut novel, The First Day, also set in Belfast, was published in 2017.