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Orwell is alive and well and living on benefit
New novel ‘Eric is Awake’ imagines George Orwell roaming the streets of contemporary London on a bike pursued by the Security Services for identity fraud.
London, UK – With ex-National Security Agency analyst Edward Snowden revealing all about the NSA and GCHQ systematically gathering vast amounts of phone and web data, the words Orwellian and Big Brother are the default currency for articles on surveillance and an encroaching secret state. Journalists are forever speculating about what Eric Arthur Blair, under his famous pseudonym, would have made of contemporary Britain. Dom Shaw’s debut novel sees Orwell dying alone at night in University College Hospital on January 21st 1950 and awaking in the body of a homeless man on a snowy night in contemporary north London where he rapidly finds himself arrested, sectioned and finally released into bed and breakfast accommodation in Hackney supported by welfare benefits.
Orwell was once described by poet Paul Potts as ‘Don Quixote on a Bicycle’ and when Eric becomes embroiled in a dispute over his identity, he goes back on the tramp with a fellow traveler on a ramshackle bike borrowed from his psychiatrist’s brother.
‘The book features extracts from Eric’s Fever Diary, a blog or journal he writes about his impressions of the modern world’ says TV scriptwriter and documentary film maker Dom Shaw. ‘I genuinely wanted to know the answer to the questions many people ask. What would he do? What would perplex and worry him about the world we live in now? Trying to write in the voice of one of the world’s most iconic authors is to place your neck into a literary noose as people rightly tend to be very possessive about Orwell. However, although Eric may well believe he is Eric, you will have to read the book to find out if he is genuine or simply delusional.’
Shaw finished the book on the Isle of Jura where Orwell wrote ‘1984’. ‘Traveling to Barnhill, 30 miles from the nearest pub at the far end of the Hebridean Isle, I realized how eager he must have been to get away from everything. In the book, he makes his way back there, so finishing the novel in that famous little room above the kitchen, surrounded by the roaring silence of Jura was very evocative.’
Cover design by Dominic Thackray
www.anonymouspresspublishers.com
Street artists respond to Eric is Awake
New novel ‘Eric is Awake’ imagines George Orwell roaming the streets of contemporary London on a bike pursued by the Security Services for identity fraud.
London, UK – With ex-National Security Agency analyst Edward Snowden revealing all about the NSA and GCHQ systematically gathering vast amounts of phone and web data, the words Orwellian and Big Brother are the default currency for articles on surveillance and an encroaching secret state. Journalists are forever speculating about what Eric Arthur Blair, under his famous pseudonym, would have made of contemporary Britain. Dom Shaw’s debut novel sees Orwell dying alone at night in University College Hospital on January 21st 1950 and awaking in the body of a homeless man on a snowy night in contemporary north London where he rapidly finds himself arrested, sectioned and finally released into bed and breakfast accommodation in Hackney supported by welfare benefits.
Orwell was once described by poet Paul Potts as ‘Don Quixote on a Bicycle’ and when Eric becomes embroiled in a dispute over his identity, he goes back on the tramp with a fellow traveler on a ramshackle bike borrowed from his psychiatrist’s brother.
‘The book features extracts from Eric’s Fever Diary, a blog or journal he writes about his impressions of the modern world’ says TV scriptwriter and documentary film maker Dom Shaw. ‘I genuinely wanted to know the answer to the questions many people ask. What would he do? What would perplex and worry him about the world we live in now? Trying to write in the voice of one of the world’s most iconic authors is to place your neck into a literary noose as people rightly tend to be very possessive about Orwell. However, although Eric may well believe he is Eric, you will have to read the book to find out if he is genuine or simply delusional.’
Shaw finished the book on the Isle of Jura where Orwell wrote ‘1984’. ‘Traveling to Barnhill, 30 miles from the nearest pub at the far end of the Hebridean Isle, I realized how eager he must have been to get away from everything. In the book, he makes his way back there, so finishing the novel in that famous little room above the kitchen, surrounded by the roaring silence of Jura was very evocative.’
Cover design by Dominic Thackray
www.anonymouspresspublishers.com
Street artists respond to Eric is Awake