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An “intelligent, disturbing slice of noir” that portrays the man who derailed the police investigation into the Yorkshire Ripper (The Guardian). In this provocative novel, Mark Blacklock portrays the true and complex history of John Humble, aka Wearside Jack, the Ripper Hoaxer, a timewaster and criminal, sympathetic and revolting, the man hidden by a wall of words, a fiction-spinner worthy of textual analysis. In this remarkable work, John Humble leads the reader into an allusive, elusive labyrinth of interpretations, simultaneously hoodwinking and revealing. I’m Jack is a riveting novel about truth, lies, prison and shame. It is also a profound and furious love letter to Sunderland. I...
A nineteenth-century tale of dangerous and pioneering ideas, based on the incredible true story of a scandalous British mathematician. Howard Hinton and his family are living in Japan, escaping from a scandal. Hinton’s obsession is his work, his voyages into mathematical pure space, into the fourth dimension, but also his wife and sons, each of whom are entangled in the strange and unknown landscapes of Hinton’s science fictions. In a bravura and startling meeting of real and philosophical elements, Mark Blacklock has created a ravishing period piece of late-Victorian social, scientific and domestic life. Hinton is about extraordinary discoveries, and terrible choices. It is about people...
This volume examines the emergence of the idea of the fourth dimension in fiction of the fin de siecle and how these new theories of the possibilities of time and space influenced writers such as Joseph Conrad, Ford Madox Ford, H.G. Wells, Henry James, H. P. Lovecraft, and others.
This celebrated Gothic novel is explored through essays providing critical, historical, anthropological, philosophical and intellectual contexts that serve to further the understanding and appreciation of Dracula in all its many guises. Together the essays offer exciting new critical approaches to the most famous vampire in literature and film.
This volume undertakes a fundamental reassessment of utopianism during the modernist period. It charts the rich spectrum of literary utopian projects between 1885 and 1945, and reconstructs their cultural work by locating them in the material 'spaces' in which they originated. The book brings together work by leading academics and younger scholars.
'A brilliant, unlikely book' Spectator How can we celebrate, challenge and change our remarkable world? In 2012, the world arrived in London for the Olympics...and Ann Morgan went out to meet it. She read her way around all the globe's 196 independent countries (plus one extra), sampling one book from every nation. It wasn't easy. Many languages have next to nothing translated into English; there are tiny, tucked-away places where very little is written down; some governments don't like to let works of art escape their borders. Using Morgan's own quest as a starting point, Reading the World explores the vital questions of our time and how reading across borders might just help us answer them. 'Revelatory... While Morgan's research has a daunting range...there is a simple message: reading is a social activity, and we ought to share books across boundaries' Financial Times
One of the most talented contemporary authors of cutting-edge math and science books conducts a fascinating tour of a higher reality, the fourth dimension. Includes problems, puzzles, and 200 drawings. "Informative and mind-dazzling." — Martin Gardner.
This is a book about three things: 1. A room called the Comedy Cellar. 2. Who gets to speak in that room. 3. What they get to say. AMY SCHUMER. LOUIS CK. JERRY SEINFELD. CHRIS ROCK. They all worked the Comedy Cellar in Greenwich Village, honing their acts, experimenting, taking risks. It was a safe space, thanks to the principles of its first owner, Manny Dworman, then his son Noam. The only threat to freedom of expression was a lack of laughs. But how did a New York taxi driver, born in Tel Aviv, create comedy’s most important stage? How did he influence some of the biggest names in stand-up? What are the limits of a joke? Who decides? And why does the comedians’ table matter so much? Andrew Hankinson speaks to the Cellar’s owner, comedians, and audience members, using interviews, emails, podcasts, letters, text messages, and previously private documents to create a conversation about the perils, pride, and prejudice of modern comedy. Moving backwards in time from Louis CK’s downfall to when Manny used to host folk singers including Bob Dylan, this is about a comedy club, but it’s also about the widening chasm in contemporary culture.
SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2017 AND THE PFD/SUNDAY TIMES YOUNG WRITER OF THE YEAR AWARD WINNER OF A SOMERSET MAUGHAM AWARD AND THE POLARI PRIZE 'A quiet explosion of a book, exquisite and unforgettable' The Economist 'A cleverly constructed rural Gothic fable . . . Elmet is a marvellous achievement' TLS 'Pastoral idyll, political exposé, cosy family saga and horror tale, it reads like a traditional children's story that turns into a gangster film: Hansel and Gretel meets The Godfather' Sunday Times Daniel is heading north. He is looking for someone. The simplicity of his early life with Daddy and Cathy has turned menacing and fearful. They lived apart in the house that Daddy built...
A ground-breaking debut novel that combines the investigatory pleasures of a legal drama with a provocative and literary exploration of the limits of empathy 'I loved this highly original and compelling story' Cathy Rentzenbrink You are about to enter a novel formed of documents and evidence. Here is the blog of a nurse on a dialysis ward attempting to live in the aftermath of bringing a rape trial to court in which the defendant was exonerated. Here are the transcripts of the police interviews with her, and the accused, the emails and texts between them submitted for trial; his journal, his conversations on 4chan, his drama scripts, him, him, him. How will the nurse, Corina, ever get him out of her head? This is a highly original debut novel that will win plaudits for its inventiveness at the same time as it compels the reader with the pleasures of suspense and family drama. Provocative, blackly funny and moving, it announces a new voice unlike any other.