PublishedFaber Fiction, April 2022 |
ISBN9780571370863 |
FormatSoftcover, 128 pages |
Dimensions19.8cm × 12.9cm × 0.7cm |
'I remembered how they began, a parody for the newspapers. No one wrote about them now.'
The Sussex coast. Sunsets paint the windswept ocean; seagulls haunt the marshland; hunting rifles crack across hillsides. But this is England through-a-glass-darkly. They are coming closer.
They begin with a dead dog, shadowy footsteps, confiscated books. Then, the National Gallery is purged; motorway checkpoints demarcate Areas, violent mobs stalk the countryside, destroying cultural artefacts - and those who resist.
The surviving writers, artists and thinkers gather together, welcoming 'dissidents' like the unmarried and the childless. These polyamorous communities preserve their crafts, create, love, and remember. But as 'subversives' are captured in military sweeps, cured of identity, desensitised in retreats, they make it easier to forget ...
Lost for over forty years, Kay Dick's They (1977) is a rediscovered dystopian masterpiece: a cry from the soul against censorship, a radical celebration of non-conformity - and a warning.
Sarah is the fiction buyer at Boffins and has a penchant for writing that is incisive and challenging, bonus points for complicated characters. Trained as a chef, Sarah enjoys all things food- be it a beautifully laid out cookbook, a crop of broad beans in her garden, or a holiday planned entirely around where to eat. When she’s not barracking for the Dockers or walking her dogs, she enjoys endlessly searching for Perth’s best coffee.
A re-published dystopian queer classic, originally released in 1977, but seems all the more present now. "They" start removing paintings, music, literature, and then "they" start punishing anyone who dares to create.
Full of tension and dread, THEY makes us consider the place the arts have in society and what would happen if they disappeared.
