Christopher Priest

Christopher Priest Christopher Priest was born in Cheshire, England. He began writing soon after leaving school and has been a full-time freelance writer since 1968. He has published twelve novels, three short story collections and a number of other books, including critical works, biographies, novelizations and children's non-fiction. Agents Robert Kirby Associate Agent 0203 214 0800 Kate Walsh [email protected] 020 3214 0884 Publications Fiction Publication Notes Details THE ADJACENT A photographer returns to a near-future Britain after the death of his wife in a 2013 terrorist incident in Afghanistan. And finds that the IRGB has, itself, been Gollancz suffering terrorist attacks. But no-one knows quite what is happening or how. Just that there are similarities between what killed the photographer's wife and what happened in West London. Soon he is drawn into a hall of mirrors at the heart of government. In the First World War a magician is asked to travel to the frontline to help a naval aerial reconnaissance unit hide its planes from the German guns. On the way to France he meets a certain H.G. Wells. In the Second World War on the airfields of Bomber Commands there is also an obsession with camouflage, with misdirection. With deceit. And in a garden, an old man raises a conch shell to his ear and initiates the first Adjacency. United Agents | 12-26 Lexington Street London W1F OLE | T +44 (0) 20 3214 0800 | F +44 (0) 20 3214 0801 | E [email protected] Publication Notes Details THE ISLANDERS A tale of murder, artistic rivalry and literary trickery; a chinese puzzle of a novel 2011 where nothing is quite what it seems; a narrator whose agenda is artful and Gollancz subtle; a narrative that pulls you in and plays an elegant game with you. The Dream Archipelago is a vast network of islands. The names of the islands are different depending on who you talk to, their very locations seem to twist and shift. Some islands have been sculpted into vast musical instruments, others are home to lethal creatures, others the playground for high society. Hot winds blow across the archipelago and a war fought between two distant continents is played out across its waters. The Islanders serves both as an untrustworthy but enticing guide to the islands, an intriguing, multi-layered tale of a murder and the suspect legacy of its appealing but definitely untrustworthy narrator. It shows Christopher Priest at the height of his powers and illustrates why he has remained one of the country's most prized novelists. THE DREAM In a world at war, the Dream Archipelago is a neutral zone, and therefore an ARCHIPELAGO alluring prospect to the young men on both sides of the conflict. In this 2009 interlinked collection of short stories and novellas, Christopher Priest explores Gollancz war, relationships and forms of reality. Each tale is a truimph of quiet, steady craftsmanship, a model of ingenious design and subtle implication, and as a group they further enrich each other by interlocking cleverly, symmetrically and sometimes sinisterly. THE THE SEPARATION is the story of twin brothers, rowers in the 1936 Olympics SEPARATION (where they met Hess, Hitler's deputy); one joins the RAF, and captains a 2007 Wellington; he is shot down after a bombing raid on Hamburg and becomes Gollancz Churchill's aide-de-camp; his twin brother, a pacifist, works with the Red Cross, rescuing bombing victims in London. But this is not a straightforward story of the Second World War: this is an alternate history: the two brothers - both called J.L. Sawyer - live their lives in alternate versions of reality. The Affirmation Peter Sinclair is tormented by bereavement and failure. In an attempt to conjure 2006 some meaning from his life, he embarks on an autobiography, but he finds Gollancz himself writing the story of another man in another, imagined, world, whose insidious attraction draws him even further in . THE AFFIRMATION is at once an original thriller and a haunting study of schizophrenia; it has a compulsive, dream-like quality. THE GLAMOUR Richard Grey, suffering from amnesia after a car-bomb explosion, is visited by a 2005 girl who seems to have been his lover. His attempts to recall the forgotten Gollancz period produce an odyssey through France and conflicting accounts of what happened. THE PRESTIGE Two 19th century stage illusionists, the aristocratic Rupert Angier and the 2005 working-class Alfred Borden, engage in a bitter and deadly feud; the effects are Gollancz still being felt by their respective families a hundred years later. Working in the gaslight-and-velvet world of Victorian music halls, they prowl edgily in the background of each other's shadowy life, driven to the extremes by a deadly combination of obsessive secrecy and insatiable curiosity. United Agents | 12-26 Lexington Street London W1F OLE | T +44 (0) 20 3214 0800 | F +44 (0) 20 3214 0801 | E [email protected] Publication Notes Details The Extremes British-born Teresa Simons returns to England after the death of her husband, 2005 an FBI agent, who was killed by an out-of-control gunman while on assignment Gollancz in Texas. A shocking coincidence has drawn her to the run-down south coast town of Bulverton, where a gunman's massacre has haunting similarities to the murders in Texas. Desperate to unravel the mystery, Teresa turns to the virtual reality world of Extreme Experience, ExEx, now commercially available since she trained on it in the US. FUGUE FOR A One of Chris Priest's earliest novels (first published in 1972). In its day Fugue DARKENING was thought of as a modern version of the familiar 'British catastrophe' science ISLAND fiction novel, but subsequent world events have given the story a sinister 1978 topicality. Tragic refugees escaping political and military upheaval at home are Macmillan now all too frequently seeking asylum elsewhere. In Fugue, survivors of a terrible African war flee their blighted continent, and look for refuge in the countries of the West. INVERTED WORLD 1979 Macmillan United Agents | 12-26 Lexington Street London W1F OLE | T +44 (0) 20 3214 0800 | F +44 (0) 20 3214 0801 | E [email protected].

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