Saturday 15th March
18:30 - 19:30
Fiction
£7/£6
Will Self‘s new novel is a disturbing allegory of the liberal West in the post-9/11 era. An innocent discarding of a cigarette butt by holidaymaking Tom Brodzinski leads to an assault charge and an accusation of attacking a mystical tribe. Worse follows: Tom is forced to atone for his sins by visiting deep into the arid heart of this strange island continent with someone also making reparations whom Tom fears is a child–abuser. They encounter a violent counter–insurgency war of which Tom has allowed himself to remain in ignorance. Refusing facile moral certitudes, Will Self‘s latest novel is set in a distorted world, in a country that is part Australia, part Iraq, part Greenland and part the heart of a distinctively modern darkness.