Showing results by author "John Fraser" in All Categories

A lawyer looks for the tiny rock of guilt in a sea of innocence. A lawyer looks for the tiny rock of innocence in a sea of guilt. That's their trade.' John Fraser has been described as 'the most original novelist of our time' by the Whitbread Award Winner and Book Prize nominee John Fuller. In Fraser's latest novel, after a convulsive war that rumbles on for thirty years a disparate group search amongst the metal skeletons, detritus and urban wreckage of a shattered land for a new life, a new start and some kind of normality. The group, comprising therapists and entrepreneurs, including the...

The Case is a novel about loss – of memory, of love, of money, of friends. The protagonist searches throughout the book for a suitcase – maybe valuable in itself, maybe because it represents resources and a destination. The novel takes us on a trip through the American dream, of wealth, cowboys Hollywood movies, and out the other side, to police shootouts, mortal danger and revolution, on a quest for the missing case. About the author: John Fraser is the author of 18 works of literary and speculative fiction. He has lived in Rome since 1980. Previously he worked in England and Canada. ...

Two new tales from John Fraser. These two tales consider basic questions. Life is a test, they say, but life comes to us as unanswered and even unanswerable questions - come to each, but surely we can't respond to all those questions, not with any confidence or authority? It all shimmers, seems uncertain, without a purpose, and yet - the heroine in The Test sees her partner swept away by gunfire, gone for good or ill, unloved and probably unmourned. She sees the solidity of all around her questioned, religions which might seem to give an answer instead propose a self-denial, abnegation ... ...

Mercenaries - four new tales by John Fraser Mercenaries: soldiers of fortune, conottieri, knight errants ... Soldiers have always been paid, somehow; a wage? ... or by their own practices of looting, enslavement, often taking it out on others for vengeance or pleasure, taking prisoners and ransoming - hostages. Yet people who soldier for the money are singled out, and looked down on ... and yet, however you do it, losing, whether done for money or the cause, is never pleasant. Being a prisoner, or dead, gives no material credit whether you are a courageous, altruistic type or needy and ...

John Fraser's ''Enterprising Women' is a sequence of stories of women in difficult circumstances , who contrive to avoid - and sometimes cause - the worst of consequences. In 'The Flies', the women are witness to violence and temptation, and although one of the heroines succumbs to alcohol, the others manage to maintain their extraneous, and independent, positions. In 'Landfall', the protagonist, a spymaster, survives the loss and betrayal of her male companions, maintains her scepticism regarding the value of her profession, and ultimately we presume she continues on her solitary path, ...

John Fraser's 'Hard Places' consists of three novellas, Red Snow, The Rock and The Sea. They concern human struggles with Nature and human natures. Red Snow involves efforts to have the better of chance by gaming, and the forms of self-discipline this requires. The Rock shows the eternal certainties of art crumbling into inexplicable absences and shady deals. The Sea evokes our longing for submersion in nature when we wish to coneal our misdeeds and rejections. About the author: John Fraser is the author of 18 works of literary and speculative fiction. He has lived in Rome since 1980. ...

John Fraser's 'Medusa' is a stunning fable for our times, in which the stories of Medusa, the Gorgon and the French ship Medusa are intertwined to create a Pilgrim's Progress for the 21st century. Medusa is a trip, a bending of the legends. It is a symphonic poem, where at the end, we even hear a few notes of a hymn to joy. The fragments of myth, legend and belief drift round like harmonies that seek resolution. But this mode is post-modern, post-Christian; it is about the end – yet there is no end: it is story. The resulting tale is an apocryphal blast and a literary tour de force that ...

In three fables, John Fraser’s The Red Tank presents founding myths and 21st century epics – viewed with a kind of Martian ‘taken-abackness’. In our new globalised world, what happens to the little beings, our species, and their allies among the beasts – do they grow, becoming giant, innocent philosophers, or do they go off to rut and runt in the forest? The human project is once more immense: taming nature, securing peace, creating order. The protagonists are fabulous, easily the equals of ancient gods and heroes. In the first fable, ‘Chinese Whispers’, we try to subdue and ...

The Other Shore focuses on a critical point in Soviet history. It deals with young Soviet intellectuals, bright but not brilliant, confronting a future threatened with war and stagnation, but still with the impetus of post-Stalinist regeneration. Rather than being a chronicle of the debates between neo-Bolsheviks, Leninists, social and liberal democrats, Trotskyists, Westernisers and traditionalists, it depicts a more modest but more frequently encountered search for commitment, for a meaningful political and social life, in a vast country where light and darkness flicker and alternate ...

The latest tour de force in speculative fiction from John Fraser. The 'Military Roads' of this book, which consists of three tales running consecutively, are, first, the adventures of a narrator following the fortunes of a leader of a revolution in a distant country: second, a journey starting in the 'military road' which in Soviet times and before, ran from Moscow to the Caucasus: and finally, a mission undertaken from Italy, through North Africa, with the aim of recruiting a private army of bodyguards for a global tycoon. The narrator's amorous adventures, and his struggles to survive ...

John Fraser’s latest work of fiction follows the refugee Khalil in two related stories, ‘The Refugees’ and ‘Travels with Strangers’. We are all refugees seeking an entry to soCaucasmewhere when we’ve left somewhere else. Our knowledge is a raft that’s carried us on lumpy seas. We can forget all that when we arrive. It doesn’t serve. We don’t, of course, stop being refugees, not ever, but we have a lot of living to do while we’re forgetting where we were before. It’s a commonplace, to say we’re strangers to ourselves – not only when we are alone, but especially when...

Thinking Scientifically is John Fraser's latest wildly original, experimental work of fiction: three stories ('The Opera', 'Round the World', 'The Shaft') centred on one theme: while we can think scientifically, can we be scientifically? We can train as scientists - but that's a job, and when we stop doing it - we're the same chimpanzee types as everybody else. When we think scientifically, what happens to all the other layers, the modalities, systems, of thought and being: the magical, the religious, the hunting and the gathering, the philosophical, the artistic...? The characters in the ...

In 'Runners' John Fraser delivers, in his unique, distinctive voice, the story of a kind of redemption – even a kind of utopia – or as much of a utopia as we can possibly expect, given what we know about most of our political leaders … An unelected leader buys the office of deputy mayor. Although this ‘boss’ is a monster, he also has a rare, enlightened side. Where other leaders cling to power, he runs – but instead of running for office, he runs from office; he and his friends become the Runners – the running dogs. Runners is a contemporary remake of Machiavelli’s Prince ...

The latest work of fiction by John Fraser (‘the most original novelist of our time’, John Fuller, Whitbread Award winner and Booker Prize nominee) consists of two stories about aspiration, and how that is suited to a short reflective life, rather than a long happenstance. ‘O the Poor Horses’ tells of a super-athlete, climber and circus star, Pierre, whose aim is to reach the top of the tent, and then beyond – perfection of the body and its mind. When Pierre tumbles and is crippled, Dora, his assistant and companion, once his facilitator who has become a dead weight, must take on ...

Three stories about The Ends of the Earth by John Fraser Making the world uninhabitable is a prospect facing us all, each has a strategy to hasten or retard – even avoid – it. Such a project would be the greatest exploit of an evolving species – greater than the creation, quicker than biology and a cock-eyed triumph of the good life and its sciences. Most of us alive won’t know if the plan succeeds, so hypothesis is the mode proposed. The people described in these thematically connected tales are precarious, but very human. Extinction would come when the exploration of the planet ...

Wayfaring, the latest of John Fraser's tour de forces in experimental fiction, consists of three novellas, with the common theme of travelling in difficult places. '‘Coming in to Land on Saturn’ is the (fictionalised) account of the extreme physical and psychological experiences of a trainee Intelligence operative. In ‘Sometimes the Watchman Is Drunk’ four people travel round the ethnically fragmented regions of Southern Yugoslavia before the wars of the 1990s. Faced with the imminence of communist breakup, the four turn to self-inquiry, as the future becomes more troubled and ...

Everyone is a part-time person. They do one thing while imagining being elsewhere, or being a lover, worker, fan - of something - or in some other life. We hope for a resolution, a better place, where the bad parts can be discarded, the good ones realised. In PARADISE, we are plunged into ever-deeper contradictions, separations: by nature a deserter, a pacifist, Harri is enrolled, becomes a soldier - becomes literally someone else. As a batman, he can fly - along with his superiors, with lovers who fly higher, outdistance him or, fatally, hit the ground. After many adventures, Harri finds ...

TRUE STORIES - three stories of modern life by John Fraser. True Stories poses the question: What is modern life? Struggling with bureaucracy, getting on, and off, lists? The protagonist, Kochi, and his young - then much older - friends, engage with love, philosophy ... the murder of a lover by the mother of a socialite, the centre of the hero's attention: and her reprisal. We follow them, their adventures, the search for the Great Principle, embodied by a fragile ancient, who dosses down and dies on his first night in Kochi's dwelling. Think, says the Master, but no life seems lived by ...

Never before has a president stirred so much controversy, so much anger. But what’s the root cause of this negativity and why are people emotionally disturbed by the 45th president? These are questions that many folks have attempted to answer, but the real reasons have been difficult to pinpoint...until now.

Good public relations is no longer just icing - it's a strategic imperative more important to your competitive success than even advertising or marketing. This is true whether you're a century-old multibillion-dollar corporation or a penniless startup. In Rethinking Reputation, public relations guru Fraser Seitel and John Doorley, founder of the Academy for Communication Excellence and Leadership at Johnson & Johnson, examine a fascinating new set of case studies.