Davide A CottoneDavide A Cottone, as an historical fiction writer, playwright and poet, delves deeply into firsthand experiences as he witnesses them unravelling in the world around him. With his forty years' experience as a teacher in Australia, Papua New Guinea, Sanghai and Hong Kong and formal qualifications of an MA in applied linguistics, Davide has the skills as well as the stories which are all based on real life experiences. He has published four full length novels, five musicals, four plays and two collections of his poetry. After his enormous success with his historical fiction novel, canecutter, where Davide captured the migrant experience of new Australians in the sugarcane fields between 1924 and 1985, the author insisted another historical fiction was the best way to get across his message on the tragedy of war in his next novel, Vietnam ... Viet-Bloody-Nam. Mr Cottone believes that when it comes to authors selecting subject matter to write about, it's 'the chatter' that matters. Writers must stay tuned in to the chatter and when something important comes up it's time to get the written word out there. In his latest book, Shriek: an absurd novel, Mr Cottone has seized upon the individual and often collective dilemma of a sense of powerlessness in the global socio-political, economic and technological headspace. He sees powerlessness as a human frailty that the powerful exploit. This trauma becomes host to autism spectrum disorders characterised by a sense of meaninglessness and worthlessness which are the seeds to self-harm and suicide. His genre of choice has now turned to absurdism which allows individuals to interpret the powerlessness phenomenon according to their own idiosyncratic life experiences. This helps give their own lives meaning and makes life worth living. Read More Read Less