Midnight Train Now Available at Amazon

The anthology Midnight Train, published by Static Movement and edited by Dorothy Davies, is now available at Amazon. It is, in fact, here. My story in this book is called ‘A Partly Successful Operation.’

Review of Su Tong’s Binu and the Great Wall

So many of the great monuments and physical achievements of East Asia have been built by the unrecorded and unrewarded labour of thousands or millions of workers. Workers were quite literally unrewarded in those states which employed corvée labour, in which men (sometimes women too but usually in different ways) were required, at spear point or similar, had to provide unpaid labour for some months every year.

Read the full review here.

Review of Coetzee’s The Master of Petersburg

All of Russia – well, urban Russia anyway – is in turmoil in the middle of the nineteenth century and a semi-voluntary émigré, living in Germany, returns to the city of St Petersburg to establish the circumstances surrounding the death of his foster son. The son, Pavel, has apparently become embroiled in the notorious Nechaev gang of revolutionaries, who seem to be pursuing a campaign of anarchistic terror. Pavel himself is reported to have left behind papers, amongst which is a list of people to be assassinated. The step-father is a well-known novelist and an intellectual and, in Czarist Russia with its reliance on the secret police and suppression of political dissidence, this makes him automatically a figure of suspicion.

Read the full review here.

Dark Secrets

My story ‘Master Zhang’s Slave’ is included in Dark Secrets, edited by the inestimable Dorothy Davis, which has just been published by Static Movement. It is available here.

That’s half a dozen or so stories I’ve had published this year, which is quite gratifying. I have been too busy to write much fiction recently but perhaps it will be possible in the new year, after catching up with the flood-induced delays.

Weird City 2: Fire Breeds Fire

My story ‘Fire Breeds Fire’ is included in the newly published anthology Weird City 2, which is edited by George Wilhite and published by Static Movement. It is available at Pillhill Press and also at Amazon.

Magistrate Li and the Case of the Beggar Monk

Good news for me (at least): my story “Magistrate Li and the Case of the Beggar Monk” has been accepted by editor Dorothy Davies at Static Movement for the forthcoming anthology ‘Dark Deeds in History.’

I will be happy to post a new link when the book is finally published and available for sale.

Oil: An Anthology

My second story to be published this year is entitled ‘The Spigot’ and is included in the Marty Ziegler edited anthology Oil, which includes stories about … well, you can probably guess.

More details are available here.

Review of Tariq Ali’s Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree

The grove of pomegranate trees on the land of the al-Hudayl family of a region close to Granada (Gharnata) is the place where the privileged family members re-establish their family and class relations for future generations. The young buck, Zuhayr, uses the place to seduce the domestic servants, who will be farmed off to distant relatives when their pregnancies are confirmed; the daughters of the house use it in the same way that their predecessors did in testing the love of those who have proclaimed it for them.

Read the full review here.

Review of Le Carre’s The Tailor of Panama

When a gentleman’s tailor in Panama (which will immediately bring to mind Graham Greene’s creation, of course) is revealed to be a fantasist becoming mixed up with a spymaster all too willing to swallow any kind of nonsense, it soon becomes very evident that it is all going to end very badly for someone and perhaps for everyone. This being John Le Carre, the small infelicities and betrayals of individuals are inexorably caught up in processes that lead to nation-shaking events.

Read the full review here.

Review of Complicity by Iain Banks

 was quite easy to feel disempowered and disenfranchised in the Britain of 1993, when this novel by Iain Banks was first published. It was even easier to feel that way in Scotland since it appeared, during the seemingly endless Thatcher/Major administration, characterised by increasing arrogance, repression, incompetence and corruption, that no amount of political organization or activities would bring about any change. The country was ruled from London on the basis of legitimacy provided by the solidly middle-class of southern and central England in all its hateful bourgeois glory.

Read the full review here.