Stillicide | Granta

  • Published: 01/10/2020
  • ISBN: 9781783787098
  • Granta Books
  • 192 pages

Stillicide

Cynan Jones

First heard on BBC Radio 4.

Water is commodified. The Water Train that serves the city increasingly at risk of sabotage.

As news breaks that construction of a gigantic Ice Dock will displace more people than first thought, protestors take to the streets and the lives of several individuals begin to interlock. A nurse on the brink of an affair. A boy who follows a stray dog out of the city. A woman who lies dying. And her husband, a marksman: a man forged by his past and fearful of the future, who weighs in his hands the possibility of death against the possibility of life.

From one of the most celebrated writers of his generation, Stillicide is a moving story of love and loss and the will to survive, and a powerful glimpse of the tangible future.

As a tract of written language, [Stillicide] is close to perfect. As a repository for ideas, it is imaginative and far reaching. As a story of and for our times, it is very human, and deadly serious... blunt perfection

Guardian

How big this small book is, giving the barest details of its future world...exciting, upsetting and essential

Financial Times

Jones lets the contours of his chilly prophecy emerge in glimpses, leaving [...] plenty of white space for the reader's imagination

Metro

The Author

Cynan Jones was born in 1975 near Aberaeron, Wales. He is the author of five short novels, The Long Dry, Everything I Found on the Beach, Bird, Blood, Snow, The Dig, and Cove. His work is published in over 20 countries and has won several prizes including a Betty Trask Award, the Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Award, the Wales Book of the Year Fiction prize, and the BBC National Short Story Award. He has also written stories for radio and screen, and a collection of tales for children. Other writing has appeared in numerous publications including Granta and the New Yorker. He was elected a Fellow of the RSL in 2019. www.cynanjones.com

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