Clownburn - Paperback

by Charles Bayfield (Author)

"My immersion in Clownburn, with its many miles of scrupulous and obsessive detail, was total" (Iain Sinclair)

"a striking and unusual romance" (Prof Richard Lansdown)

These are some early reviews of Clownburn on Amazon.

This is a novel that sets itself in the modern day while encompassing a thousand year sweep of history. As the book's protagonist walks the length of Kilburn High Road and observes the brokenness and destitution of modern London, Clownburn embraces Prester John, the Umayyid Caliphs and the Mughal Chittagongs. It visits kilim workshops in Jodhpur and ruined citadels baking beneath Somali skies, and follows trade winds to the Tasman Sea. It plays craps with nineteenth century ambassadors, fights bare knuckle butchers and mourns lost rivers. It is a love affair between a man and a woman and a man and a place. A landbound Flying Dutchman, Wulfstan is the cursed man, condemned to walk the road between St Albans and Westminster - and back again - for ten centuries. We join him on the final day of his life, as full of fury and self-loathing as when he began his adventure.