Fiction
Category: Fiction, Literary Fiction
Number of pages: 160
ISBN: 9781854113030
Publication date: October 31, 2001
Price: £6.95
Love in all its guises is the subject of Nick Murray’s wise and witty A Short Book About Love. Woven into a comic re-telling of the classic legend of Tristan and Iseult – one of the world’s greatest love stories – is the story of Felix, growing up in post-war Liverpool and, in the wake of a father’s death, trying to come to terms with the meaning of what Philip Larkin, called ’that much-mentioned brilliance, love’.
In between are narratives, playful and serious, on the irresistible topic. This sparkling pocket-epic spans the globe, from Greece to Italy, from China to Russia, offering walk-on parts to Nelson Mandela, Clinton and Lewinsky, Oscar Wilde, Lewis Carroll and countless other poets, philosophers, and legendary lovers, who have learned that ’a world without love is no world at all’.
Nicholas Murray
Nicholas Murray is a poet and literary biographer living in Powys. He wrote the first biography of Bruce Chatwin, published by Seren, which was followed by lives of Matthew Arnold, Aldous Huxley, Andrew Marvell and Franz Kafka and biographical studies of the WW1 poets and the nineteenth century British travellers, then latter being re-issued in 2027 by Eland. Two works of fiction, a book on borders and Real Bloomsbury have all been published by Seren. He has published three books of poetry including Elsewhere: Collected Poems in 2022 and over a dozen poetry pamphlets. He won the Basil Bunting Prize in 2015 and is co-publisher of the award-winning Powys-based poetry pamphlet imprint Rack Press. He has enjoyed collaborating as a poet with the Sage Dance Company at the Bloomsbury Festival and with other composers. His 2016 book on borders, Crossings inspired a string quartet by Cheryl Frances Hoad premiered at the Presteigne Festival and he writes the Free Range Writing Substack. His Instagram account is @rackpress. His freelance reviews and essays have appeared in the TLS, LRB, Guardian, Independent, Literary Review, Slightly Foxed, Planet, New Welsh Review and many others. He is currently Honorary Visiting Research Fellow at Liverpool John Moores University.
