Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life (Pulitzer Prize Winner) (Paperback)

Barbarian Days is William Finnegan’s memoir of an obsession, a complex enchantment. Surfing only looks like a sport. To initiates, it is something else: a beautiful addiction, a demanding course of study, a morally dangerous pastime, a way of life.

“Surfers are self-centered arseholes sometimes.” I’m sure the surf obsessed among us recognise this sentiment. It’s in that moment when your partner catches you looking out the window at the toetoe plants for wind directions, and checking the tides at the most inconvenient times of the day. I suspect this is why William Finnegan’s Pulitzer Prize-winning surfing biography is called Barbarian Days. However, Finnegan has made a valiant attempt to argue our case.”