The Invention of Lars Ruth (Paperback or Softback)

On a remote forest farm in northern Sweden, the static of Lars Ruth's unsettled mind is fizzing. Voices. Sightings. Encounters, real and imagined, hint at a fractured and fragmentary life. Something is falling apart - something coming together.

The Invention of Lars Ruth is an intimate, visionary exploration of psychic disquiet. Its themes, of remembrance and aloneness, spiral around an evasive, haunting figure. But who is Lars? His voice is the echo to a volatile mind, aware of its disintegration, fearful of imminent collapse. Only by re-imagining his place in the natural world and the mysterious creatures in it, can Lars Ruth secure his newly awakening self.

George Messo's fifth book of poems is a richly inventive, candid reflection on the individual nature of mental distress; a darkly playful, bold new collection from one of Shearsman's most reticent poets.

George Messo divides his time between Saudi Arabia and Sweden. A poet, editor and teacher, he is also a prominent translator of Turkish poetry. His first collection in English, From the Pine Observatory, appeared in 2000. His subsequent collections are all from Shearsman. His translations of the Turkish poet Ilhan Berk appeared have beeb published in three volumes by Shearsman, alongside his groundbreaking anthology, Ikinci Yeni: The Turkish Avant-Garde (2009) and there Complete Poems of Orhan Veli (2016).