London Orbital: A Walk Around the M25 - Hardcover

Sinclair, Iain

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1862075476 ISBN 13: 9781862075474

Publisher: Granta Books, 2002

Synopsis

London Orbital sets out to map the London that is deeply unfashionable and strangely unknown, even to those who live there. With an engaging wit familiar to his readers, Iain Sinclair focuses on the vast stretch of urban settlement bounded by the M25, the road that encircles London. Against dramatic smoke-filled skies he chronicles a series of epic walks, accompanied by simpatico friends and encountering such denizens of this demimonde as J. G. Ballard. Dave McKean's illustrations accompany this exploration of the desolate realm surrounding the historic city. "Sinclair is a prose stylist almost without peer." — San Francisco Chronicle

About this title

About the Author

Iain Sinclair was born in Cardiff and now lives in Hackney, East London. He is the author of Lights Out for the Territory, Landor's Tower, White Chappell Scarlet Tracings, Downriver, Lud Heat and Radon Daughters.

From Publishers Weekly

At first glance, this may appear to be only a book of observations about walking alongside the M-25, the roughly 150-mile highway that encircles London, but it is actually a complex, literary meditation on crime, urban sprawl, the effect of automobiles, British politics, the relationship between history and modernity, and perhaps not least, the importance of good footwear. Sinclair (Lights Out for the Territory) writes in a hyper, staccato style that in a single passage can run the gamut from Beat poetry ("Narrative fractured. Verbals didn't stand up. Confessions wouldn't cohere. The motorway was loud with Chinese whispers") to the paranoid, embellished worldview of Hunter S. Thompson ("When dusk fell, villains took to their [borrowed-without-the-owner's-consent] cars. On the cruise. Tooted up with hand guns, machetes, petrol cans, monkey wrenches"). As with Thompson, one gets the sense that Sinclair's hyperbolic descriptions get at the truth better than a more conventional portrayal ever could. Sinclair is an artist with no patience for cheesy development, shopping malls or the very highway on which he walks, slicing past beautiful countryside and abandoned factories alike. The writing is often enjoyable, but at times heavy-handed and replete with references that will escape those not conversant in British culture: "An excuse to sample oysters in Whitstable (Notting Hill prices)," he writes, "to swim at Walberswick (Southwold: the new Hampstead)." The book is both fascinating and exhausting, and readers will find themselves rewarded even if they need to put it down frequently just to stretch their legs.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Granta Books
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 1862075476
• ISBN 13: 9781862075474
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 400
• Illustrator: McKean Dave