Aye-Aye Books & Variant Magazine John Barker - Futures Book Launch

John Barker will be reading from his recently published novel Futures and will be joined by Bechaela Walker reading from her recent work. The readings will then open up into a discussion of the nature and possibilities of ‘political’ fiction. This would encompass the very nature of what is ‘the political’; varieties of such fictional work; and an estimate of what such fiction can do that other writing, whether reportage, theory, history or philosophy cannot do. Despite all the sociological analysis of people’s limited time in the internet age, does political fiction 'reach places other writing cannot’? Writers, readers and anyone with an interest in such questions are welcome.

John Barker was born in London in 1948. In 1969, along with six others, he ripped up his Cambridge University Finals papers as part of a campaign against education as a system of exclusion. In 1972, in what was called the Angry Brigade trial, he was convicted with three others of conspiring to cause explosions. He served a ten-year prison sentence. A crafted memoir of this time, Bending the Bars was published many years later. He worked as a dustman and welder before being implicated in a conspiracy to import cannabis in 1986. In 1990 he was finally arrested and served a five-year sentence. Since then he has worked constantly as a writer and book indexer.

“In Futures, John Barker has produced a fast-paced, hard-boiled novel that pulls you back, effortlessly, into morally corrupt Thatcherite London. Barker's crisp, laconic, prose, eye-for-detail storytelling, command of the art of narrative, and his ear for fluid and convincing dialogue makes him, in my view, Hackney's worthy successor to Tom Wolfe.” —Stuart Christie, author of Granny Made Me an Anarchist.

“In this fast-paced, streetwise take on eighties London, boundaries blur between the cocaine trade and newly deregulated financial markets. High and low life don't look so different, as everyone tries to make a killing. Barker's portrait of a cynical, money-hungry culture skewers a moment in history that for good or ill (and mostly for ill) made Britain what it is today”. Hari Kunzru, The Impressionist

See also: Barker, John, 2010, From Coca to Capital: Free Trade Cocaine, Mute

Thanks to PM Press