David Anthony Durham was born in 1969 to parents of Caribbean ancestry. He won the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Fiction Award in 1992 and received an MFA from the University of Maryland in 1996. His first novel, Gabriel’s Story, was published to wide acclaim in 2001.

He is the award-winning author of the novels Gabriel's Story, Walk Through Darkness, and Pride of Carthage, which has been translated into six languages. Durham currently lives with his wife and children in California, and he teaches in the MFA program at Cal State University, Fresno.

Acacia: Book One: The War With the Mein
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Hardcover: 592 pages
Publisher: Doubleday (June 12, 2007)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0385506066

“Durham vividly captures the frenzy of ancient warfare—battle-maddened pachyderms, hails of javelins and arrows, ordered ranks of Roman light infantry crumbling before Hannibal's mercenary army of ''copper-skinned'' Libyans, tattooed and dreadlocked Numidians and blond, blood-drinking Gauls. 'The world is cruel,' Durham's Hannibal proclaims, and it is.” —The New York Times

About the Book
Leodan Akaran, ruler of the Known World, has inherited generations of apparent peace and prosperity, won ages ago by his ancestors. A widower of high intelligence, he presides over an empire called Acacia, after the idyllic island from which he rules. He dotes on his four children and hides from them the dark realities of traffic in drugs and human lives on which their prosperity depends. He hopes that he might change this, but powerful forces stand in his way. And then a deadly assassin sent from a race called the Mein, exiled long ago to an ice-locked stronghold in the frozen north, strikes at Leodan in the heart of Acacia while they unleash surprise attacks across the empire. On his deathbed, Leodan puts into play a plan to allow his children to escape, each to their separate destiny. And so his children begin a quest to avenge their father's death and restore the Acacian empire–this time on the basis of universal freedom.

ACACIA is a thrilling work of literary imagination that creates an all-enveloping and mythic world that will carry readers away. It is a timeless tale of heroism and betrayal, of treachery and revenge, of primal wrongs and ultimate redemption. David Durham has reimagined the epic narrative for our time in a book that will surely mark his breakthrough to a wide audience.

Pride of Carthage
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Paperback: 592 pages
Publisher: Anchor (January 3, 2006)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0385722494

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Pride of Carthage was a Book Sense 76 pick and a finalist for the Legacy Award for Fiction.

About the Book
This epic retelling of the legendary Carthaginian military leader’s assault on the Roman empire begins in Ancient Spain, where Hannibal Barca sets out with tens of thousands of soldiers and 30 elephants. After conquering the Roman city of Saguntum, Hannibal wages his campaign through the outposts of the empire, shrewdly befriending peoples disillusioned by Rome and, with dazzling tactics, outwitting the opponents who believe the land route he has chosen is impossible. Yet Hannibal’s armies must take brutal losses as they pass through the Pyrenees mountains, forge the Rhone river, and make a winter crossing of the Alps before descending to the great tests at Cannae and Rome itself.

David Anthony Durham draws a brilliant and complex Hannibal out of the scant historical record–sharp, sure-footed, as nimble among rivals as on the battlefield, yet one who misses his family and longs to see his son grow to manhood. Whether portraying the deliberations of a general or the calculations of a common soldier, vast multilayered scenes of battle or moments of introspection when loss seems imminent, Durham brings history alive.

Walk Through Darkness
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Format: Hardcover, 304pp.
ISBN: 0385499256
Publisher: Doubleday & Company, Incorporated
Pub. Date: April  2002
Edition Desc: 1ST

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Walk Through Darkness was a Summer Reading Pick from The Washington Post, an Editor's Choice for Summer Reading from The Wall Street Journal, a New York Times Notable Book and one of The San Francisco Chronicle's Best Books of 2002.

About the Book
The second novel by the acclaimed author of Gabriel’s Story, Walk Through Darkness is a story of history infused by myth, the intense narrative of an escaped slave trying to reunite with his pregnant wife.

Walk Through Darkness is the story of two very different men, each on a quest, both tied together by a history of remorse, jealousy, and a love that crosses the barriers of race during the time of slavery.

William, a fugitive slave from Maryland, is driven by two powerful needs--to find his wife, Dover, who is pregnant with his child, and to live as a free man. He undertakes the treacherous journey north to restore meaning to his life, putting him at odds with the law and the sentiments of a nation. Morrison, who fled a painful youth in Scotland, had once hoped to establish a new life in America with his brother, but the unforeseen realities of immigrant life drove them apart.

As David Anthony Durham traces the physical and spiritual journeys of William, Dover, and Morrison he captures in rich, evocative detail the events and the landscape of America just before the turmoil of the Civil War. Interweaving tragedy and hardship with a profound understanding of enduring love and the desire for freedom. Walk Through Darkness is a complex story that is uniquely American, reflecting the tortured nature of the country’s bloodlines and uncovering the deep bonds, and wounds, that exist across racial lines. This is a well-wrought work of "fiction in history" that follows two very different American men's paths to freedom, and places a difficult part of our nation's history under a magnifying glass to search for something beyond pain. In the end, it also presents a new possibility for healing -- for the characters, and for the larger racial divide that still haunts the United States.

Building on the strengths of his extraordinary debut, Durham opens the reader's eyes anew to the eternal odyssey to find a home and identity in America.

Related Links

David Anthony Durham Web Site
http://www.davidanthonydurham.com/

 

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