Stewart Home is een Engelse auteur, bekend om zijn satirische en avant-gardistische benadering van literatuur. Zijn werken parodiëren vaak conventionele genres en maken gebruik van technieken zoals de appropriatie van pulp-tropen en postmodernistische collage. Home schuwt experimenten met vorm niet, wat blijkt uit zijn onconventionele optredens tijdens lezingen. Zijn schrijven daagt de lezer uit en dwingt hen hun eigen zelfgenoegzaamheid onder ogen te zien.
Ray 'The Cat' Jones, originally aspiring to be the middleweight boxing champion, became infamous as a legendary cat burglar. His notoriety stems from his daring escape from London's Pentonville Prison in 1958 and a series of bold thefts that captured public attention. This tale explores his transformation from a hopeful athlete to a notorious figure in the criminal underworld, highlighting his audacity and cunning.
Strange things happen on social media, such as the almost chance encounter between a London born-and-bred fitness instructor and a drug-fueled Spanish witch. At first Maria Remedios and Martin Cooper share their love for super-dumb, two-chord stomp in private messages, but when they meet magic happens. Maria knows that she and Martin have been lovers in past lives, and sets out to convince the former skinhead that her occult beliefs are true.
Merced Es Benz is an account of a dysfunctional love affair, narrated through SMS, email, Facebook, and Google search results. Set in a barely-credible pre-Olympic London, the story unfolds amidst Bow E3’s high-rises and east London’s art parties, where the offspring of the affluent indulge in 90s rave nostalgia. The remnants of a ‘virtual’ conversation serve as circumstantial evidence, revealing a ‘real’ intimacy behind a messy social media scandal that attracted tabloid attention. Iphgenia Baal’s non-fiction novel navigates the complex intersection of death, mourning, and Facebook, suggesting that downward mobility can be a more intoxicating, albeit less fatal, drug than heroin. This work is part of the Semina series, edited by Stewart Home, which has also featured authors like Bridget Penney and Jarett Kobek. After a journalism career that ended in 2008, Baal has focused on writing, with previous works including The Hardy Tree and Gentle Art, as well as serialised pieces like The Seedless Grape. Some of her writings have been adapted for film, including Heavy Vibrations. She has contributed to various publications and co-founded the imprint AKA. This title is published as part of Book Works’ Semina series (No.8), edited by Stewart Home.