Books Books
Category: Fiction, History, Literary Fiction, Non Fiction
Number of pages: 219
ISBN: 9781781726136
Publication date: November 1, 2021
Price: £9.99
Shortlisted for the Paul Torday Memorial Prize 2023
“A tour de force… a splendid union of documentation and imaginative reconstruction…” – Jeremy Hooker
Paris is an extraordinary city, never more so than during the German occupation, with all the tensions, accommodations, resistances and paradoxes which that entailed. Civilised German officers engage in Parisian culture while their colleagues torture and kill in the city; French citizens measure what needs to be sacrificed in order to survive, or to be free. Morality is more sharply in focus than ever, and more expendable.
Against this background, and at the centre of the novel, moves Marcel Petiot, doctor, collaborator or resistance fighter, psychopath and serial murderer. He is the embodiment of the chaos and brutality of war, of the evil and inhumanity of dictatorship. As Curtis’s novel progresses and awareness of Petiot and his actions grows, so too does his presence in the book. With the liberation of Paris, Petiot is at its centre, forced into new roles and new conspiracies to avoid trial and the guillotine. Truth and fiction blur, fundamentally, plausibility is tested, answers are few and questions multiply. Who was Petiot? Perhaps he himself did not know. Certainly the people he killed did not.
Stretching backwards and forwards within the twentieth century, and with a cast including Picasso, Braque, Sartre, Hemingway and Lee Miller, this remarkable multi-form novel combines fiction, journals, poetry and images to investigate what war can let loose, and how evil can dominate a man. Its collage technique reflects the continual shifts of life in the city of light.
Tony Curtis
Poet, critic, essayist, expert on Welsh Art, Tony Curtis was born in Carmarthen in West Wales in 1946. He studied at Swansea University and Goddard College, Vermont. He is the author of numerous collections of poetry, including his latest: From the Fortunate Isles: New and Selected Poems. He has also written volumes of critical work on poets and artists and edited popular anthologies of poetry. He is Emeritus Professor of Poetry at the University of South Wales, where he established and was Director of the MPhil in Writing for many years. He has been elected to the Royal Society of Literature and has toured widely reading his poetry to international audiences.
“Importantly, I wanted to turn each page and although I didn’t enjoy being in Petiot’s company, I was fascinated by how the story unfolded…”
Geraldine Paine
“A fascinating, intricate story woven together very skilfully.”
Dr Chris Evans
“This book will surprise and inform the reader as it shines a light on the dark recesses of the human mind.”
Glamorgan Star
“Tony Curtis’ fine novel is a synthesis of negotiated truths, a harmonising of belief from many disparate testimonies, and it is to his huge credit that the picture he paints is both disturbing, and coherent.”
The Yorkshire Times
“…a genre-defying new novel… Curtis masterfully smudges the already blurred lines between fiction and fact.”
Nation.Cymru
“Darkness in the City of Light is an important book which gives a voice to the voiceless…”
Wales Arts Review
“A tour de force… a highly readable novel and a splendid union of documentation and imaginative reconstruction, as well as a convincing rendering of different voices. I was enthralled…”
Jeremy Hooker
