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Tuesday 1 May 7.00pm
Reading: Borderlines
with Iain Sinclair & Ciaran Carson
Iain Sinclair & Ciaran Carson take us on two remarkable journeys through histories both recent and ancient, and landscapes both familiar and unfamiliar, psychic and physical.

With a cast that includes Howard Marks, Bruce Chatwin, Eric Gill and Allen Ginsberg, Landor’s Tower (Granta £15.99), Iain Sinclair’s first novel for eight years, travels the M4 westward touching Bristol, Arnolfini, the Aust Services, and the borderlands of the Eywas Valley. Commissioned to write a book about Walter Savage Landor’s attempt to establish a senatorial estate around Llanthony Priory, the narrator is sidetracked
by more recent conspiracies: the Marconi suicides and the Jeremy Thorpe case. A burnt out media bum, Kaporal, employed to research these events, sends taped reports from his journeys up and down the M4. Are they evidence, or deranged fictions, contrived to keep him on the payroll?

Ciaran Carson’s Shamrock Tea (Granta £14.99) delights in stories and their meandering connections with an infinity of other stories. Van Eyck’s painting, The Arnolfini Marriage, is at the centre of this complex work incorporating a galaxy of esoteric knowledge from saints’ days and animal symbolism to miracles and transformations. Shamrock tea, the miraculous substance that allows people to experience the world with visionary clarity, can only be found by passing through the painting into another realm. Arthur Conan Doyle believed that you could read the world in a drop of water. Shamrock Tea is a homage to this idea.
Winner of The Irish Times Literature Prize and the T.S. Eliot Prize, poet and author Ciaran Carson’s works include Last Night’s Fun, The Star Factory, and Fishing for Amber. Iain Sinclair is a poet, author, and essayist. His works include Lights Out for the Territory; White Chappell, Scarlett Tracings; and Rodinsky’s Room (with Rachel Lichtenstein)
£2.50/£1.50 concessions
Please note the bookshop will be closed on Sunday 1 April for stocktaking.