The Cut: (No. 2 Peirene Now!)

The Cut is a commissioned novel responding to Brexit. Published on the first anniversary of the EU referendum on June 23rd 2017, it will be a fictional exploration of the forces that split Britain apart. ===== The Cut is a wound, of course, but it is more than that.Cairo Jukes walks the towpaths of "the cut", the Black Country term for the canals that web this small region of England, the open veins of an old industrial order. And then there is Dudley -a town at the heart of the Black Country - where a young woman runs through the market-place with her clothes on fire. Who she is? Why is she burning? And what part has Cairo played in her life? We follow these two characters across a single day in Brexit-era Britain. ===== 'I want to write this book because, like many people, in the days after the referendum I felt angry. But I quickly realized that my anger was different. I was outraged at a reaction which labelled seventeen and a half million people "stupid" or "racist" or simply lacking (too old, too poor, too far away from London, too white). In The Cut, I want to analyse the complex divisions undermining British society. We've been offered too many answers already, this is a story built on questions.' Anthony Cartwright ===== Why Peirene chose to commission this book:'The result of the EU referendum shocked me. I realized that I had been living in one part of a divided country. What fears - and what hopes - drove my fellow citizens to vote for Brexit? I commissioned Anthony Cartwright to build a fictional bridge between the Britains that opposed each other on referendum day.' Meike Ziervogel

About the Author :
Born in Dudley in 1973, Anthony Cartwright is the author of four previous novels, publsihed by Serpent's Tail, most recently Iron Towns (2016), which was praised in both The Guardian ('Cartwright achieves something bold in Iron Towns: a fictional enactment of communal identity and shared culture...expert, restrained and skilful.') and The Daily Mail (A gritty, moving elegy for an abandoned, once-thriving section of society'). His first three novels were all shortlisted for various literary awards, and he has also published a collaborative novel with Gianluca Favetto, Il giorno perduto (The Lost Day), released in Italy in 2015.

Review :
PRAISE FOR ANTHONY CARTWRIGHT: 'A writer with a wonderful ear ... and an unblinking sense of Britain as it is today. Anthony Cartwright's patient, attentive storytelling shines a glowing light on areas of our common experience that the English novel usually consigns to darkness.' JONATHAN COE; 'A bittersweet elegy to Britain's battered working classes.' METRO; 'Similar scope to Don DeLillo's Underworld and such ambition pays. This impressive novel succeeds in giving voice to a part of the country that is more frequently spoken about than listened to.' THE OBSERVER