10th Anniversary Editions: Meet the First Three Stories
And just like that, the first THREE books in our 10th Anniversary Editions launch on the 17th November 2023!
These stories, with connecting webs of secrecy and the societal constructs that keep us penned into false identities and ways of being, are a beautiful opening to editions that reflect our publishing legacy here at Jacaranda.
From BAFTA award-winning filmmaker and author Stephen S. Thompson’s No More Heroes to Radhika Jha’s deeply absorbing My Beautiful Shadow, the two novels in this release are powerful explorations of the dualities that can and do exist in our public and personal, and the dangers that occur when both aspects of ourselves are misaligned.
For short story lovers, The Blink That Killed the Eye by Anthony Anaxagorou compellingly takes a poetic torch to the shadows of daily life.
Meet the first of our 10th Anniversary releases:
No More Heroes | Stephen S. Thompson
Simon Weekes becomes an overnight celebrity after his heroics during the 7/7 Bombings. But Simon can't afford the newfound fame and attention — he has too much to lose.
July 7, 2005. Simon Weekes is travelling on the London Underground when his tube carriage is wrecked by a bomb blast. Virtually everyone is killed and almost all the survivors are severely injured. Except for Simon.
Having quickly and calmly organised the small band of survivors out of the wreckage and to safety, word of Simon's heroics get out in the days following the bombing. Now under the full glare of the media spotlight, he becomes an overnight celebrity, hounded for interviews and regularly approached in the street by autograph hunters.
The only thing is, he doesn’t want all the attention. He can’t afford it. He has too much to lose.
My Beautiful Shadow | Radhika Jha
Kayo is a young Tokyo housewife and mother. Outwardly, she is no different from other young mothers, but her secret sets her apart. She belongs to a kind of club, which involves luxury, beautiful clothes and accessories.
The club makes it possible for Kayo to escape her tedious life, to become someone else and to embrace a dazzling new world. But it quickly becomes an obsession, a drug, the way to both paradise and hell. Can she find her way out of the dark underworld of debt, lies and prostitution? Or is she doomed to exchange one form of loneliness for another?
A deeply absorbing novel about the “holes” that suddenly appear in women’s lives, My Beautiful Shadow is a powerful cautionary tale about consumerism gone mad.
The Blink That Killed The Eye | Anthony Anaxagorou
A stunningly crafted debut short story collection, The Blink That Killed the Eye takes a poetic torch to the shadows of daily life, illuminating the characters, situations, emotions and dilemmas that pour into even the most ordinary existences.
From building sites to prison cells... from the birth of love to the last moments of breath... poet Anthony Anaxagorou expertly navigates through the tangled nets of invisibility, desperation and power to bring us time-defining tales of tragedy and hope — commenting on the irony of our shrinking capacity to really see ourselves or each other in a world increasingly defined by appearances and dangerous preconceptions.
While each story stands affectingly on its own, Anaxagorou also weaves an affecting chronology, the lives of the characters overlapping and intertwining as they develop individually.
Exploring themes of invisibility, alienation, abuse, and loss, this brave and touching short story collection shows the poet-educator at his soul-stirring best.
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All the titles in our 10th Anniversary Editions are available for pre-order, so do not hesitate to shop the entire list, while you enjoy the first three editions.
Fans old and new of the books in our Anniversary Editions can also now find a community of lovers on the Novellic App — creating discussion groups and bookclubs to enrich their experience of these stories. All titles are now live on the Novellic mobile app, ready for you to add to your wish list.