Ewan Morrison

A Novel

How to Survive Everything

Winner of the Saltire Literary Award Fiction Book of the Year 'Literary gold . . . Morrison has published his masterpiece' Sunday Times 'Sensational. Like nothing I've ever read. A tour de force' Ian Rankin 'This moving tale of growing up in a Maoist cult, and the traumatic aftermath, explores ideas of freedom, control and identity with warmth and humour' Alex Preston, Observer 'Amazing . . . There are few writers left in Britain who have his ambition, vision and empathy. Nina is marvellous creation and this is an important novel' Irvine Welsh 'Compelling. Chilling' Lionel Shriver Nina X has never been outside. She has never met another child. Nina X has no books, no toys and no privacy. Nina X has no idea what the outside world is like. Nina X has a lot to learn. Nina X has no mother and no father; she has Comrade Chen, and Comrades Uma, Jeni and Ruth. Her closest emotional connection is with the birds she sees when she removes the plasterboard that covers her bedroom window. Comrade Chen has named her The Project; she is being raised entirely separated from the false gods of capitalism and the cult of the self. He has her record everything in her journal, to track her thoughts. To keep her ideology pure, her words are erased, over and over again. But that was before. Now Nina is in Freedom, and all the rules have changed. She has to remember that everything is opposite to what she was told, and yet Freedom seems to be a very confusing and dangerous place.

Nina X

Ménage

"Is the menage a trois a way to live, or just a dream, impossible in reality?" "In 1993, Dot, Saul and Owen lived together on the fringes of the Hoxton art scene, shoplifting, dole scrounging, doing drugs and swapping clothes and beds. Their year as a menage, however, led to a suicide attempt, to art stardom, and to one of the three vanishing from the world." "Fifteen years later there is a big retrospective of Dot's art and they are each drawn back into each other's lives. But can they relive the past, or will they rekindle the passions that nearly destroyed them?" "Menage is a Jules et Jim for the jilted generation. A tale of heroin chic, fake moustaches, shoplifted sherry, pickled animals, and a love so insane that it could only be a work of art." --Book Jacket.

Menage

Fashion. Food Courts. Lingerie. Fire Bombing. Suicide. Free Parking. Welcome to the Mall. Why would one woman threaten to kill another for a pair of discounted shoes? Why are cross-dressers drawn to mall car parks? What do impulse buys have to do with rioting? And why are market research companies hiding the truth from us? From one of the UK s most acclaimed literary and media talents, Tales From The Mall, is a mash-up of fiction, essays and true stories, that tells the rise of the most iconic symbol of our modern age the shopping mall. From over a hundred interviews and confessions, Morrison re-tells the true-life tales of those who work, shop and even find love inside their walls. With wry wit, insight and compassion, Morrison uncovers the secrets of retail heaven and hell, to reveal how malls manipulate our emotions in cleverly calculated ways, how they are an ideal space to meet a new lover or to kill yourself and how they are taking over the world. A startling window on our time, to make you think, fear and laugh. Retail will never be therapy again.

Tales from the Mall

A New York Times Editor’s Pick. Shortlisted for the Bookmark Festival Book of the Year and the McIlvanney Prize "I wasn’t sure there could be a great pandemic novel. Here it is." Ian Rankin My name is Haley Cooper Crowe and I am in lockdown in a remote location I can’t tell you about. It’s five years after the pandemic, and for most people life has returned to normal—but not for Haley Cooper Crowe and her brother Ben. Children of divorce, they live with their mother, but their dad believes there’s a new, much deadlier virus spreading out of control, and that he can only save his kids by kidnapping them and hiding them in his remote prepper hideaway. Once confined to their off-grid “safe house”, Haley and Ben are completely cut off from civilisation. Will they make it out alive? How can they save their mother? How can they discover what’s happening on the outside? Propulsive, electrifying, tense, and often visceral and funny, How to Survive Everything is one teenage girl’s guide to navigating the imminent collapse of her world, family and sanity.

Published to mark John Herdman's 80th birthday in 2021. Writers, academics, publishers and literary figures from Britain, Europe and North America came together to celebrate Scottish novelist and critic, John Herdman. The cast of Not Dark Yet are John Herdman's contemporaries and friends, his students and readers. This celebration of John Herdman is witness to the strength of admiration that exists for this Scottish writer's work, a body of writing that extends over a period of seven decades. And seven decades is impressive — especially for a man who is only just turning eighty.

A Celebration of John Herdman

Not Dark Yet

A work about relationships between men and women.

Distance

Nina X ist die Geschichte einer außergewöhnlichen jungen Frau, die von Geburt an in einer maoistischen Kult-Kommune in "ideologischer Reinheit" erzogen wird und dann in unsere moderne Welt flieht. Über 20 Jahre lang hat Nina X keine Bücher, keine Spielsachen und keine Privatsphäre. Ihre engste emotionale Beziehung unterhält sie zu den Vögeln vor ihrem Zimmerfenster, wenn sie mutig genug ist, die Gipsplatte zu entfernen, die es verdeckt. Nina hat das kleine Haus in London noch nie verlassen. Sie hat nie ein anderes Kind getroffen. Sie hat keine Mutter und keinen Vater; sondern einen Führer und vier Genossinnen. Der allmächtige Führer nennt sie Das Projekt; sie wird von den "falschen Göttern des Kapitalismus" und vom "Kult um das Ich und das Selbst" ferngehalten. Der Führer verlangt von ihr, alles in Notizbüchern festzuhalten, um ihre Gedanken verfolgen zu können; zwingt sie, die Einträge so lange zu überarbeiten und umzuschreiben, bis sie seiner Vorstellung entsprechen. Ihre eigenen Worte werden ausgelöscht, wieder und wieder ...Doch das war damals. Jetzt ist Nina in Freiheit, und alle Regeln haben sich verändert. Sie muss sich immer wieder sagen, dass jetzt alles das Gegenteil von dem ist, was sie gelernt hat – und trotzdem ergibt die Welt immer noch keinen Sinn. Ein geheimnisvoller Roman mit einer exzentrischen, unzuverlässigen Protagonistin, die unsere Welt in einem ganz anderen Licht sieht.

Roman

Ewan

It's the '90s and Dot, Saul and Owen are living together on the fringes of the Hoxton art scene - shoplifting, dole-scrounging, swapping drugs, clothes and beds. Fifteen years later they are drawn back into each other's lives but can they happily relive the past or will they rekindle the passions that nearly destroyed them? 'A fast-paced, poignant tale about the arrogance of youth and insane, all-consuming love' Sunday Herald 'Ménage is an accomplished, often poignant novel [which] strives to go beyond corrosive irony and world-weary cynicism to recapture a sense of the possibilities of love' Scotland on Sunday 'Thank goodness for Ewan Morrison... It is a mark of [his] considerable talent that his exploration ... remains fascinating' Independent

Impotent Scottish HR employee David leaves his family and begins a relationship with an American woman named Alice. With David teetering on the brink of unemployment, Alice decides they need help, and a remedy that starts out with sexy bedtime stories ends up right in the thick of Glasgow's swinging scene. And there, in the 'Black Room' along with nine other couples, where you can feel everything but see nothing, each of them finally finds what they are looking for...

Swung

In 1981 a mother abandoned her child and drove into the night, never to return. Her disappearance was reported in the press as a fatal road accident. Her body was never found. Thirty years later, Rowan has a child of her own. Leaving her young family and life in London, she returns to her childhood home to find a failed utopia shrouded in secrecy.

Close Your Eyes

'One of the most provocative, intelligent and original novelists working in Britain today.' Irvine Welsh My dad taught us to be prepared for whatever was coming. He said we should know the facts about how long we could survive without food, water or fresh air, and to remember that we couldn't live at all without hope. It was better, he said, to be ahead of the game. Better to be ten years too early than one minute too late. That’s why he did what he did, on that morning ... Inspired by her father’s advance planning and her own ingenuity and courage, this is one teenage girl’s survival guide for navigating life under a new, even more deadly pandemic from the confines of a prepper compound. Will she ride out the collapse of everything she knows, and how can she save her family – and sanity?

Morrison's no-holds-barred collection of short stories tells of people caught between places and lovers as well as between desire, addiction and regret. Whether male or female; gay or straight; young or old; married, single or divorced - the urban battlefield of modern relationships is here charted with such a streetwise precision and heart-wrenching tenderness that this collection of post-Millennial fables is destined to be an instant classic.

Ewan Morrison

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