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''When I met the Devil I was twelve years old. I''d just started holding hands with Holly from the top end of the village and, even though I thought she was only messing me around when she said that she''d be my girlfriend, I still went along with it. That''s something else about this time of my life (the bit about Holly, I mean) but I''d say you probably want to hear about the Devil, don''t you?'' The Bygones is a glimpse into a specific part of the world, at a specific time, of what will soon be called history. These small stories range from the very real to the very bizarre, but even at their strangest point they speak an honesty that chimes with the magic that our gut tells us is still alive. You will encounter the devil, god, friends, misfits, relatives, spirits and soothsayers, in a village that doesn''t exist, surrounded by towns that don''t exist. Who knows who you''re going to meet next.
November 10th, 1989: Claudia Bierschenk was thirteen years old when the Berlin Wall came down. In this intimate memoir, she reveals a world ruled by ideology, restrictions, half-truths, superstition, but also magic and humour. With a child''s curiosity, she observes the grown-ups'' strange behaviour as they cope with the day to day existence of living on ''the wrong side'' of the Iron Curtain.
The novella began as a story treatment for a proposed film adaptation of Alan E. Nourse''s novel The Bladerunner. A later edition published in the 1980s changed the formatting of the title to Blade Runner, a movie. Burroughs'' treatment is set in the early 21st century and involves mutated viruses and ''a medical-care apocalypse''. The term ''blade runner'' referred to a smuggler of medical supplies, e.g. scalpels.
This selection of ''new poems'' is partly sourced from an extensive archive found hidden in the poet''s former abode. Within these pages: alcohol, melancholia, Get Carter, menstrual blood, loneliness, unsatisfying sexual encounters, fading personal relationships, passionate trysts, emotional breakdowns and so on. Perseverance by the reader will, however, be rewarded with glimpses of humour, goodwill and even compassion. But always with Mr Guffan''s barely concealed complicity to be ''bent for the job''.
Most famously depicted as the 300-pound, pill-popping Samoan attorney in Hunter S. Thompson''s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Oscar ''Zeta'' Acosta''s wild, moving first book, originally published in 1972, reveals a man of astonishing variety. A converted Baptist missionary in Panama, bar hopper, psychiatric patient, struggling writer, heartbroken lover, great imposter, connoisseur of excess, Chicano activist, Brown Buffalo - Acosta did it all, then disappeared like a puff of smoke off the coast of Mazatlan, Mexico in the spring of 1974.
A Cage of Shadows was first published in 1973 to enthusiastic reviews and announced the arrival of a major new writer. Set in the Black Country during the 1930s, it tells of Hill''s brutal upbringing. On leaving home, he encountered further degradation in prisons, mental hospitals and on skid row. But a chance meeting in the ''50s changed his life: Hill became friends with Klaus ''Doc'' Fuchs, who instilled in him a passion for literature and encouraged him to write. Libel action in 1975 meant copies of A Cage of Shadows were pulped. This new edition reinstates the original text.
A gathering of some of the writers, both living and dead, who haunt and influence Iain Sinclair on his own London books.
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