The website of writer and poet Daniel Bennett
'I hate furniture and clowns.' And kicked on by that first line, we follow Edmonde Sieglinde Kerrl and her hazardous progress through Nazi Germany, from the rise of the party until the trials at Nuremberg. A lover of Shakespeare and opera, sexually liberated and haunted by the spectre of her deceased father, Edmonde is a … Continue reading The Queen of the Night by Marc Behm
'There is always that element of surprise when, while walking down streets one expects to be ugly, marred and disfigured by the most degrading forms of manual labour, we suddenly see them transfigured by a ray of sunshine- like a moment of fleeting happiness.' I'll probably never get over the relationship between writing and setting. … Continue reading The Shape of A City by Julien Gracq
'Right now, I'd say information is big business.' In the early 1990s, a friend of mine started receiving packages addressed to an 'H. Warner' to his shared house in Acton. You know what it's like with a previous tenants' mail. You let it build up and up, until one day curiosity gets the better of … Continue reading The Snowman by Jorg Fauser
'Don't ask; relax.' Every week I take a train journey of about two hours. Once, I would take this journey twice each day, and although it eventually became too large a bite out of my life, for a while I was able to lose myself in the time. I'd write on a small laptop— a … Continue reading Mockingbird by Walter Tevis
In 2001, I travelled to Brussels, for a long weekend. One night, travelling back to my hotel on the Metro, on the way to Simonis, a man took the seat opposite me. He was mixed race, and balding, dressed in jeans and trainers, a T-shirt with an illegible decal underneath his cotton jacket
Absence Club 