In a Strange Land

Here is a collection of joined-up stories for these disjointed times, for the exiled and the out-of-place. Have you ever felt you are not where you should be? Rome’s favourite love poet does; he must now entertain a bunch of hairy barbarians. A blood-stained dictator finds himself making breakfast for his nine youngest children in a Novotel. On the Edgeware Road a Syrian ophthalmologist tells his girlfriend about a sudden career change whilst, on the other side of the city, a stock-market darling explains how his sudden flight abroad is all part of the strategy. France’s chic empress languishes in the damp Kent countryside – how did it come to this? In Beijing, an Ulsterman’s friendship with the Empress Dowager is not going to prevent him being massacred. On the Western front, a Cumbrian gunner celebrates, finally, his imminent demobilization…

The action in this strange book, stretches from Chislehurst to the Chagos Islands, from Billericay to the Black Sea. What these men and women have in a common is one thing: they are all terribly far from home. And you?