Summer of the Cicadas
As the road rises in elevation, the air grows cooler. I keep going until the river narrows with boulders. Sweat sticks to my skin as I slow and pull over on the side of the road. I stash the bike amongst some bushes and climb down the encampment to the water bed.
The Weightless World
Raymond Ess is going to kill me. This is the thought I can’t stop thinking. One way and another I’ve been thinking it for years, though I used to mean something like Raymond Ess is going to be annoyed with me or Raymond Ess is asking too much of me. I don’t mean either of those things now. I just mean he’s going to kill me…
Never Mind the Beasts
Written with tremendous energy, Never Mind The Beasts (Dostoyevsky Wannabe) is Marcus Slease's debut novel. Beginning in Portadown, Northern Ireland during the Troubles, the book details the author's move with his family, as a small boy, first to Milton Keynes and then to Las Vegas before documenting his further solo travels trying to survive on the meagre pickings of a writer whilst teaching English as a second language in everywhere from South Korea, Poland to Turkey and, latterly, Spain (Madrid and Barcelona). Read an excerpt here.
Should we Meet at the Crossroads, Keep Walking
They call me the Perambulator. Everything must have a name, and it fits, I can’t deny it, for each new dawn finds me trudging the cobbles, working the streams and pools. Nothing makes sense without movement; I’m cast and reconstructed in every hard-won step.
A Furious Oyster
What if Pablo Neruda met a giant, interdimensional oyster? What if Neruda could narrate the encounter from the afterlife, generating extra material for his autobiography? From this bizarre premise an intoxicating poetry is born. Read this extract from Jessica Sequeira’s innovative novel A Furious Oyster (Dostoyevsky Wannabe), a book that deserves reading and re-reading.
Kristina Bruuk: Between Heaven and Helsinki
Bill Drummond reflects on the legend of the “missing” Finnish singer Kristina Bruuk, what she represents, both past and present, and how her life continues to fascinate, even as her music remains unreleased, or rare and hard to find.
Patience
Elliot’s an incredible observer, able to memorise and categorise in astonishing detail. He’s also an ideal friend, overflowing with compassion and warmth and fun. But he’s stuck, forced to spend his days in an empty corridor, either gazing out of the window at the birds in a tree or staring into a white wall – wherever the Catholic Sisters who run the ward have decided to park his wheelchair…. Read an excerpt from Toby Litt’s astonishing novel Patience (Galley Beggar Press), shortlisted for the 2020 Republic of Consciousness Award.
The never-ending quest…
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