Journeys to the End of the Light

American Smoke

In American Smoke, Iain Sinclair hits the road to America in the tracks of the Beats. 
 
On the trail of the American Beats, Iain Sinclair makes a delirious and perhaps ill-fated expedition in the footsteps of Malcolm Lowry, Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs, Charles Olson and Gary Snyder. It is a journey in search of literary ghosts behind mirages of volcanoes and the Old West. In which rumours vie with false memories and unreliable reports to steer our guide from one strange adventure into another. It is an odyssey in which the beginning offers no clues as to where it may end. 
 
'A transatlantic odyssey . . . grippingly haunted' Observer 
 
'A challenging, maddening, fascinating journey . . . enjoy Sinclair's poetic language and subtly warped sense of humour. Rich and engrossing' Metro 
 
'Sit back and feel the invigorating pulse of beautifully crafted prose . . . wonderful' Daily Telegraph 
 
'Iain Sinclair has gone from cult author to national treasure' Robert Macfarlane 
 
Iain Sinclair is the author of Downriver (winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Encore Award); Landor's Tower; White Chappell, Scarlet Tracings; Lights Out for the Territory; Lud Heat; Rodinsky's Room (with Rachel Lichtenstein); Radon Daughters; London Orbital, Dining on Stones, Hackney, that Rose-Red Empire and Ghost Milk.

His voice is still urgent. If we know what's good for us, we'll listen

Sinclair's is a prolix poetics, an amassing of noun-hives whose compacted wit would make the most lexically dexterous rapper envious

To overlook Sinclair is to ignore one of the most distinctive voices in Britain

Iain Sinclair is the author of numerous works of fiction, poetry non-fiction, including Lud Heat; White Chappell, Scarlet Tracings; Downriver; Radon Daughters; Lights Out for the Territory; Rodinsky's Room, with Rachel Lichtenstein; Landor's Tower; London Orbital; Dining On Stones; Hackney, That Rose-Red Empire and Ghost Milk; American Smoke and London Overground. Downriver won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Encore Award. He lives in Hackney, east London.

On the trail of the American Beats, Iain Sinclair makes a delirious and perhaps ill-fated expedition in the footsteps of Malcolm Lowry, Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs, Charles Olson and Gary Snyder. It is a journey in search of literary ghosts behind mirages of volcanoes and the Old West. In which rumours vie with false memories and unreliable reports to steer our guide from one strange adventure into another. It is an odyssey in which the beginning offers no clues as to where it may end.

City of Disappearances

London

An endlessly fascinating anthology of writing about streets, places and people that have disappeared in and from London

'A book full of richness, unexpected enticements, short sharp shocks and breathtaking writing' Guardian 
 
Welcome to the real, unauthorised London: the disappeared, the unapproved, the unvoiced, the mythical and the all-but forgotten. The perfect companion to the city. 
 
'Exhilarating, truly wonderful, a cavalcade of eloquent writing. London demands an anthology like this to remind us of the irascible quirkiness of its residents, and we have Sinclair to thank for marshalling such a perverse and ultimately pleasurable exercise' Independent on Sunday

Calling Time on the Grand Project

Ghost Milk

In Ghost Milk Iain Sinclair exposes the dark underbelly of the Olympics 2012 
 
Burrowing under the perimeter fence of the grandest of Grand Projects - the giant myth that is 2012's London Olympics - Ghost Milk explores a landscape under sentence of death and soon to be scorched by riots. This is a road map to a possible future as well as Iain Sinclair's most powerful statement yet on the throwaway impermanence of the present. 
 
'Wonderful, sharp, amusing, grippingly atmospheric. One of our most dazzling prose stylists' Daily Telegraph 
 
'A scorching diatribe' Independent 
 
'Sinclair views London through a distortingly surreal lens; a striking visual poetry and tart black comedy are extracted from even the most hopeless of London locations. For those unfamiliar with Sinclair's work, Ghost Milk is a good place to start' Spectator 
 
'Inventive, dazzling, arresting. Sinclair lays bare the human consequences and mourns the disruption of communities, the erasure of history and of a sense of place and continuity. This is Sinclair at his best. He is the archetypal whistleblower, a pricker of vainglorious and self-promoting hyperbole. A superb chronicle of an improbable dream that has descended to a nightmare. It is essential reading for all Londoners curious about their city' Dan Cruickshank, New Statesman 
 
'Be warned: Ghost Milk reads like some whimsical meld of the poet Allen Ginsberg, comic books writer Alan Moore and an anarchists' message board. Highly alienating' Evening Standard 
 
'A wounding assault' DJ Taylor, Independent on Sunday 
 
'Sinclair's literary excavations of London's memory go deeper than anyone's' Time Out 
 
'Brilliant' Robert Macfarlane, Guardian 
 
Iain Sinclair is the author of Downriver (winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Encore Award); Landor's Tower; White Chappell, Scarlet Tracings; Lights Out for the Territory; Lud Heat; Rodinsky's Room (with Rachel Lichtenstein); Radon Daughters; London Orbital, Dining on Stones, Hackney, that Rose-Red Empire and Ghost Milk. He is also the editor of London: City of Disappearances.

Wonderful, sharp, amusing, grippingly atmospheric. One of our most dazzling prose stylists

Dazzling . . . Sinclair's explorations by foot are highly engaging and anything but pedestrian

Brilliant, superb. Anger drives the book forwards. Sinclair has gone from cult author to national treasure

Ghost Milk reads like a meld of poet Allen Ginsberg, comic books writer Alan Moore and an anarchists' message board . . . There is no doubt that Sinclair is original, observant, a wonderful phrase maker

A striking visual poetry and tart black comedy are extracted form even the most hopeless of London locations

A scorching 400-page diatribe against this and other "grand projects" . . . [Sinclair is] a crazily knowledgeable local historian with a shaman's grasp of strange energies, unseen ley lines, urban esoterica

What happens when the games have gone? Iain Sinclair reports on the trouble to come 
Beginning in his east London home many years before it will be invaded by the Olympian machinery of global capitalism, Sinclair strikes out near and far in search of the forgotten and erased. 
 
Burrowing under the perimeter fence of the grandest of Grand Projects - the giant myth that is 2012's London Olympics - Ghost Milk explores a landscape under sentence of death and soon to be scorched by riots. This is a road map to a possible future as well as Iain Sinclair's most powerful statement yet on the throwaway impermanence of the present.

A Confidential Report

Hackney, That Rose-Red Empire

Hackney, that Rose-Red Empire is Iain Sinclair's foray into one of London's most fascinating boroughs 
 
'As detailed and as complex as a historical map, taking the reader hither and thither with no care as to which might be the most direct route'Observer 
 
Hackney, That Rose-Red Empire is Iain Sinclair's personal record of his north-east London home in which he has lived for forty years. It is a documentary fiction, seeking to capture the spirit of place, before Hackney succumbs to mendacious green papers, eco boasts, sponsored public art and the Olympic Park gnawing at its edges. It is a message in a bottle, chucked into the flood of the future. 
 
 
'An explosion of literary fireworks'Peter Ackroyd, The Times 
 
'Gloriously sprawling, wonderfully congested, one of the finest books about London in recent decades'Daily Telegraph 
 
'Sinclair adopts the roles of pedestrian, pilgrim and poet, magnificently illuminating the borough's historical and spiritual life'The Times 
 
'Remarkable, compelling, bristles with unexpected, frequently lurid life. On Sinclair's territory there's nobody to touch him . . . a gonzo Samuel Pepys'Sunday Times 
 
Iain Sinclair is the author of Downriver (winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Encore Award); Landor's Tower; White Chappell, Scarlet Tracings; Lights Out for the Territory; Lud Heat; Rodinsky's Room (with Rachel Lichtenstein); Radon Daughters; London Orbital, Dining on Stones, Hackney, that Rose-Red Empire and Ghost Milk. He is also the editor of London: City of Disappearances.

Hackney, That Rose-Red Empire is Iain Sinclair's personal record of the area of north-east London where he has lived for forty years. It is a documentary fiction, seeking to capture the spirit of place, before Hackney succumbs to mendacious green papers, eco boasts, sponsored public art and the Olympic Park gnawing at its edges. It is a message in a bottle, chucked into the flood of the future.

In the Traces of John Clare's 'Journey Out of Essex'

Edge of the Orison

Iain Sinclair is one of the most original and influential writers of the last decade.

In Edge of the Orison the visionary Iain Sinclair walks in the steps of poet John Clare. 
 
In 1841 the poet John Clare fled an asylum in Epping Forest and walked eighty miles to his home in Northborough. He was searching for his lost love, Mary Joyce - a woman three years dead ... 
 
In 2000 Iain Sinclair set out to recreate Clare's walk away from madness. He wanted to understand his bond with the poet and escape the gravity of his London obsessions. Accompanied on this journey by his wife Anna (who shares a connection with Clare), the artist Brian Catling and magus Alan Moore - as well as a host of literary ghosts, both visionary and romantic - Sinclair's quest for Clare becomes an investigation into madness, sanity and the nature of the poet's muse. 
 
'Brilliant . . . amusing, alarming and poignant. An elegy for an already lost English landscape. Magnificent and urgent' Robert Macfarlane, Times Literary Supplement 
 
'A sensitive,beautifully rendered portrait . . . a feast, a riddle, a slowly unravelling conundrum . . . a love-letter to British Romanticism' Independent 
 
'Sinclair walks every inch of his wonderful novels and psychogeographies, pacing out huge word-courses like an architect laying out a city on an empty plain' J. G. Ballard, Observer 
 
 
Iain Sinclair is the author of Downriver (winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Encore Award); Landor's Tower; White Chappell, Scarlet Tracings; Lights Out for the Territory; Lud Heat; Rodinsky's Room (with Rachel Lichtenstein); Radon Daughters; London Orbital, Dining on Stones, Hackney, that Rose-Red Empire and Ghost Milk. He is also the editor of London: City of Disappearances.

In 1841 the poet John Clare fled an asylum in Epping Forest and walked eighty miles to his home in Northborough. He was searching for his lost love, Mary Joyce &ndash; a woman three years dead &hellip; 
 
In 2000 Iain Sinclair set out to recreate Clare&rsquo;s walk away from madness. He wanted to understand his bond with the poet and escape the gravity of his London obsessions. Accompanied on this journey by his wife Anna (who shares a connection with Clare), the artist Brian Catling and magus Alan Moore &ndash; as well as a host of literary ghosts, both visionary and romantic &ndash; Sinclair&rsquo;s quest for Clare becomes an investigation into madness, sanity and the nature of the poet&rsquo;s muse.

Dining on Stones

Dining on Stones is Iain Sinclair's sharp, edgy mystery of London and its environs 
 
Andrew Norton, poet, visionary and hack, is handed a mysterious package that sees him quit London and head out along the A13 on an as yet undefined quest. Holing up in a roadside hotel, unable to make sense of his search, he is haunted by ghosts: of the dead and the not-so dead; demanding wives and ex-wives; East End gangsters; even competing versions of himself. Shifting from Hackney to Hastings and all places in-between, while dissecting a man's fractured psyche piece by piece, Dining on Stones is a puzzle and a quest - for both writer and reader. 
 
'Exhilarating, wonderfully funny, greatly unsettling - Sinclair on top form' Daily Telegraph 
 
'Prose of almost incantatory power, cut with Chandleresque pithiness' Sunday Times 
 
'Spectacular: the work of a man with the power to see things as they are, and magnify that vision with a clarity that is at once hallucinatory and forensic' Independent on Sunday 
 
Iain Sinclair is the author of Downriver (winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Encore Award); Landor's Tower; White Chappell, Scarlet Tracings; Lights Out for the Territory; Lud Heat; Rodinsky's Room (with Rachel Lichtenstein); Radon Daughters; London Orbital, Dining on Stones, Hackney, that Rose-Red Empire and Ghost Milk. He is also the editor of London: City of Disappearances.

Andrew Norton, poet, visionary and hack, is handed a mysterious package that sees him quit London and head out along the A13 on an as yet undefined quest. Holing up in a roadside hotel, unable to make sense of his search, he is haunted by ghosts: of the dead and the not-so dead; demanding wives and ex-wives; East End gangsters; even competing versions of himself. Shifting from Hackney to Hastings and all places in-between, while dissecting a man's fractured psyche piece by piece, Dining on Stones is a puzzle and a quest - for both writer and reader.

White Chappell, Scarlet Tracings

Penguin publication to coincide with the Hamish Hamilton publication of Sinclair's new novel, Dining On Stones.

A novel about London -- its past, its people, its underbelly and its madness. 
 
"In this extraordinary work Sinclair combines a spiritual inquest into the Whitechapel Ripper murders and the dark side of the late Victorian imagination with a posse of seedy book dealers hot on the trail of obscure rarities of that period. These ruined and ruthless dandies appear and disappear through a phantasmagoria interspersed with occult conjurings and reflections on the nature of fiction and history" GUARDIAN

Downriver

A brilliant London novel, which together with London Orbital, Lights Out For The Territory and White Chappell, Scarlet Tracings confirm Sinclair as one of the most original and stimulating commentators on London.

Downriver is a brilliant London novel by its foremost chronicler, Iain Sinclair. 
 
WINNER OF THE ENCORE AWARD AND THE JAMES TAIT BLACK MEMORIAL PRIZE 
 
The Thames runs through Downriver like an open wound, draining the pain and filth of London and its mercurial inhabitants. Commissioned to document the shifting embankments of industry and rampant property speculation, a film crew of magpie scavengers, high-rent lowlife, broken criminals and reborn lunatics picks over the rivers detritus. They examine the wound, hoping to expose the cause of the city's affliction . . . 
 
'Remarkable: part apocalyptic documentary, part moth-eaten ghost story, part detective story. Inventive and stylish, Sinclair is one of the most interesting of contemporary novelists' Sunday Times 
 
'One of those idiosyncratic literary texts that revivify the language, so darn quotable as to be the reader's delight and the reviewer's nightmare' Guardian 
 
'Crazy, dangerous, prophetic' Angela Carter 
 
 
Iain Sinclair is the author of Downriver (winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Encore Award); Landor's Tower; White Chappell, Scarlet Tracings; Lights Out for the Territory; Lud Heat; Rodinsky's Room (with Rachel Lichtenstein); Radon Daughters; London Orbital, Dining on Stones, Hackney, that Rose-Red Empire and Ghost Milk. He is also the editor of London: City of Disappearances.

"Crazy, dangerous, prophetic" Angela Carter 
 
In DOWNRIVER, Iain Sinclair traces the ruins of Margaret Thatcher's reign through the lens of a fictional film crew that has been hired to make a documentary about what's left of London's river life. The Thames may still flow through the heart of the capital, but life along its shores has changed dramatically. 
 
DOWNRIVER is a savage, satirical quest to understand how people's lives, a government's policies and a legendary waterland conspire together in a boggling display of self-destruction.

London Orbital

London Orbital received wonderful review coverage in hardback (Granta).

London Orbital is Iain Sinclair's exceptional voyage of discovery into the unloved outskirts of the city 
 
'My book of the year. Sentence for sentence, there is no more interesting writer at work in English' John Lanchester, Daily Telegraph 
 
Encircling London like a noose, the M25 is a road to nowhere, but when Iain Sinclair sets out to walk this asphalt loop - keeping within the 'acoustic footprints' - he is determined to find out where the journey will lead him. Stumbling upon converted asylums, industrial and retail parks, ring-fenced government institutions and lost villages, Sinclair discovers a Britain of the fringes, a landscape consumed by developers. London Orbital charts this extraordinary trek and round trip of the soul, revealing the country as you've never seen it before. 
 
'A magnum opus, my book of the year. I urge you to read it. In fact, if you're a Londoner and haven't read it by the end of next year, I suggest you leave' Will Self, Evening Standard 
 
'A journey into the heart of darkness and a fascinating snapshot of who we are, lit by Sinclair's vivid prose. I'm sure it will be read fifty years from now' J. G. Ballard, Observer

A brilliant voyage of discovery into the deeply unfashionable fringes of London. 
 
'It isn't often that one reads a book and is convinced that it's an instant classic, but I'm sure that LONDON ORBITAL will be read 50 years from now. This account of his walk around the M25 is on one level a journey into the heart of darkness, that terrain of golf courses, retail parks and industrial estates which is Blair's Britain. It's a fascinating snapshot of who we are, lit by Sinclair's vivid prose, andon another level a warning that the mythological England of village greens and cycling aunts has been buried under the rush of a million radial tyres' 
J. G. Ballard, Observer

Lights Out for the Territory

London Orbital will also be published in Penguin paperback in September 2003.

'A book about London; in other words, a book about everything' Peter Ackroyd, The Times 
 
Walking the streets of London, Iain Sinclair traces nine routes across the territory of the capital. Connecting people and places, redrawing boundaries both ancient and modern, reading obscure signs and finding hidden patterns, Sinclair creates a fluid snapshot of the city. In LIGHTS OUT FOR THE TERRITORY he gives us a daring, provocative, enlightening, disturbing and utterly unique picture of modern urban life. And in the process he reveals the dark underbelly of a London many of us did not know existed.

Iain Sinclair

Publisher's description. From London's master psychogeographer and the author of Hackney, That Rose-Red Empire, comes a new adventure into the city's ancient and modern secrets. This is a living history of the edgelands and forgotten spaces surrounding London Overground: a portrait of the shifting, changing metropolis as seen from the 'Ginger Line'.

Sometimes dark, sometimes wry... For the aficionado, London Overground will deliver all the delights of Sinclair's edgy and hard-edged prose; for those who do not know his work it is an accessible starting point for one of the most rewarding oeuvres in 21st century literature

He is incapable of writing a dull paragraph

Sinclair breathes wondrous life into monstrous, man-made landscapes

If you are drawn to English that doesn't just sing, but sings the blues and does scat and rocks the joint, try Sinclair. His sentences deliver a rush like no one else's

Sinclair [is a] peerless London literary wanderer and street-level cultural archaeologist... delirious, often hilarious urban palimpsest where pin-sharp observation, cultural hauntings and offbeat memoir fuse in sentences that catch your breath like a lurid toxic sunset over Hackney Marshs

For my money the most crucial and most bar-adjusting voice currently resonating in the English language.... Those who aspire to understand what is happening in modern writing should start here

A Day's Walk Around the Ginger Line

Echoing his journey in London Orbital over a decade ago, Iain Sinclair narrates his second circular walk around the capital. Shortly after rush-hour and accompanied by a rambling companion, Sinclair begins walking along London's Overground network, or, 'Ginger Line'. With characteristic playfulness, detours into folk history, withering assessments of the political classes and a joyful allegiance to the ordinary oddball, Sinclair guides us on a tour of London's trendiest new transport network - and shows the shifting, changing city from new and surprising angles.

Iain Sinclair

Praise for London Overground

Publisher's description. From London's master psychogeographer and the author of Hackney, That Rose-Red Empire, comes a new adventure into the city's ancient and modern secrets. This is a living history of t ...

Sometimes dark, sometimes wry... For the aficionado, London Overground will deliver all the delights of Sinclair's edgy and hard-edged prose; for those who do not know his work it is an accessible starting point for ...

He is incapable of writing a dull paragraph

Publisher's description. From London's master psychogeographer and the author of Hackney, That Rose-Red Empire, comes a new adventure into the city's ancient and modern secrets. This is a living history of t ...

Sometimes dark, sometimes wry... For the aficionado, London Overground will deliver all the delights of Sinclair's edgy and hard-edged prose; for those who do not know his work it is an accessible starting point for ...

He is incapable of writing a dull paragraph

Publisher's description. From London's master psychogeographer and the author of Hackney, That Rose-Red Empire, comes a new adventure into the city's ancient and modern secrets. This is a living history of t ...

Sometimes dark, sometimes wry... For the aficionado, London Overground will deliver all the delights of Sinclair's edgy and hard-edged prose; for those who do not know his work it is an accessible starting point for ...

He is incapable of writing a dull paragraph

Books by Iain Sinclair

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