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SHORTLISTED FOR THE ARTHUR C. CLARKE AWARD 2022 LONGLISTED FOR THE GORDON BURN PRIZE A monumental speculative fiction story of love, loyalty, politics and conscience set in parallel Londons The Ark was built to save the lives of the many, but rapidly became a refuge for the elite, the entrance closed without warning. Years later, Markriss Denny is one of the select few granted entry. He carries with him a closely guarded secret: the ability of his spirit to leave his body and transcend the known world. But once in, he learns of another who carries the same power, and their existence could spell catastrophe for humanity. Denny is forced into a desperate race to understand his abilities, and in doing so uncovers the truth about the Ark, himself and the people he thought he once knew.
James William Newland’s (1810–1857) career as a showman daguerreotypist began in the United States but expanded into Central and South America, across the Pacific to New Zealand and colonial Australia and onto India. Newland used the latest developments in photography, theatre and spectacle to create powerful new visual experiences for audiences in each of these volatile colonial societies. This book assesses his surviving, vivid portraits against other visual ephemera and archival records of his time. Newland’s magic lantern and theatre shows are imaginatively reconstructed from textual sources and analysed, with his short, rich career casting a new light on the complex worlds of the mid-nineteenth century. It provides a revealing case study of someone brokering new experiences with optical technologies for varied audiences at the forefront of the age of modern vision. This book will be of interest to scholars in art and visual culture, photography, the history of photography and Victorian history.
When his dad dies under police arrest after a pub brawl, Cory goes to live with his cousin, Sean. By their late teens the cousins, though close, have chosen different paths. Sean is trying to improve his life through education, whereas Cory has already become involved in petty crime - burglary and dealing E. However, everything changes when Cory stabs a man called Roger after a rave, putting him in hospital. This has grave repercussions for Cory - Roger was supposed to be taking part in an armed robbery with Levi, a notorious crack dealer. Levi now expects Cory to take his place. But Cory breaks his leg during a football match and Sean, unable to find a replacement for his cousin, and desperate to help him, agrees to join in on the robbery himself. However, having entered a world of (apparently) easy money and hard drugs, Sean finds it increasingly hard to return to his previous life as The Scholar......
In his sharply crafted, unnerving first collection of speculative fiction shorts, Courttia Newland envisages an alternate future as lived by the African diaspora. Robots used as human proxies in a war become driven by all-too-human desires; Kill Parties roam the streets of a post-apocalyptic world; a matriarchal race of mer creatures depends on inter-breeding with mortals to survive; mysterious seeds appear in cities across the world, growing into the likeness of people in their vicinity. Through transfigured bodies and impossible encounters, Newland brings a sharp, fresh eye to age-old themes of the human capacity for greed, ambition and self-destruction, but ultimately of our strength and resilience.
Constructed of stone and packed earth, the Great Wall of 10,000 li protects China’s northern borders from the threat of Mongol incursion. The wall is also home to a supernatural beast: the Old Dragon. The Old Dragon’s Head is the most easterly point of the wall, where it finally meets the sea. In every era, a Dragon Master is born. Endowed with the powers of Heaven, only he can summon the Old Dragon so long as he possess the dragon pearl. It’s the year 1400, and neither the Old Dragon, the dragon pearl, nor the Dragon Master, has been seen for twenty years. Bolin, a young man working on the Old Dragon’s Head, suffers visions of ghosts. Folk believe he has yin-yang eyes and other para...
This is the first book to provide a direct and comprehensive account of British art cinema. Film history has tended to view British filmmakers as aesthetically conservative, but the truth is they have a long tradition of experiment and artistry, both within and beyond the mainstream. Beginning with the silent period and running up to the 2010s, the book draws attention to this tradition while acknowledging that art cinema in Britain is a complex and fluid concept that needs to be considered within broader concerns. It will be of particular interest to scholars and students of British cinema history, film genre, experimental filmmaking, and British cultural history.
Paul Newland's illuminating study explores the ways in which London's East End has been constituted in a wide variety of texts - films, novels, poetry, television shows, newspapers and journals. Newland argues that an idea or image of the East End, which developed during the late nineteenth century, continues to function in the twenty-first century as an imaginative space in which continuing anxieties continue to be worked through concerning material progress and modernity, rationality and irrationality, ethnicity and 'Otherness', class and its related systems of behaviour.The Cultural Construction of London's East End offers detailed examinations of the ways in which the East End has been constructed in a range of texts including BBC Television's EastEnders, Monica Ali's Brick Lane, Walter Besant's All Sorts and Conditions of Men, Thomas Burke's Limehouse Nights, Peter Ackroyd's Hawksmoor, films such as Piccadilly, Sparrows Can't Sing, The Long Good Friday, From Hell, The Elephant Man, and Spider, and in the work of Iain Sinclair.
A celebratory 20th anniversary edition of A landmark collection from black writers across the literary spectrum 'The fact that IC3, the police identity for Black, is the only collective term that relates to our situation here as residents ('Black British' is political and refers to Africans, Asians, West Indians, Americans and sometimes even Chinese) is a sad fact of life I could not ignore' from Courttia Newland's Introduction, 2000 First published twenty years ago into a different literary landscape, IC3 showcases the work of more than 100 black British authors, celebrating their lasting contributions to literature and British culture. It spans a wealth of genres to demonstrate the range a...
This story tells of the timeless challenges brought about by immigration, settlement, and belonging; of lives challenged by terrible circumstances, where often the power of love can be the only strengthening shield.