Adam Marek

978-1905583508 | 1905583508
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**Long-listed for the 2013 Frank O'Connor International Short Story Prize**
**Short-listed for the 2013 Edge Hill Short Story Prize**

'Hits the target every time.' - The Guardian

'The Stone Thrower is best viewed as a window on Marek’s distinctive imagination, in which the mundane waltzes with the macabre... this bold young writer is refreshing the form.' - The Financial Times

'...Addictively off-kilter. The stories are likely to stay in the back of your mind for a long time.' Litro Magazine

'It is in stories like this, where oddness and absurdity work alongside simplicity and restraint, that Marek’s writing talents are most evident and most enjoyable.' The Literateur

'Expertly deploys the conventions of the form, with eye-catching opening lines and devious endings.' - The Observer

'It’s dark and inventive and thought-provoking; Marek has a gift for both comedy and pathos, and an imagination that ranges widely between science-fiction and bleak realism. I like it. You’ll like it. Go and get it.' Bookmunch

‘Adam Marek is one of the best things to have happened to the short story this century. His stories might be strange, delicious or haunting - but they're always compelling. Any day now the word 'Marekian' is going to enter the language. Get in on the act early. Read him now.’
– Alison MacLeod, Prof of Contemporary Fiction at the University of Chichester, short-listed for the 2011 BBC National Short Story Award.

Intelligent clothing, superhero dictators, contagion-carrying computer games, cross-species reproduction… Welcome to the strange and startling world of Adam Marek; a menagerie of futuristic technology, sinister traditions and scientifically-grounded superpowers – a place where the absurd and the mundane are not merely bedfellows, but interbreed.

Pulsing at the core of Adam Marek’s much-anticipated second collection is a single, unifying theme: a parent’s instinct to protect a particularly vulnerable child. Whether set amid unnerving visions of the near-future, or grounded in the domestic here-and-now, these stories demonstrate that, sometimes, only outright surrealism can do justice to the merciless strangeness of reality, only the fantastically illogical can steel us against what ‘ordinary’ life threatens.

‘The fragility of children is overwhelming in this collection. In stories beautiful and strange, Marek tries to build a kind of fortress against what would truly break us. This is writing as exorcism and prayer, words to dispel brutality and fate.’
– David Vann

'I hope that among the fantastical imagery of The Stone Thrower everyone will recognise something of his or her self. We all fear being left alone. We are not alone in that fear.' - Adam Marek in The Guardian, 28 Oct 2012. Read the full article here

Watch Adam read from the collection at The Word Factory held at The Society Club in Soho here

About the Author

Adam Marek is an award-winning short story writer. He won the 2011 Arts Foundation Short Story Fellowship, and was shortlisted for the inaugural Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award. His first story collection Instruction manual for swallowing was nominated for the Frank O’Connor Prize. His stories have appeared in many magazines, including: Prospect and The Sunday Times Magazine, and in many anthologies including Lemistry, Litmus and The New Uncanny from Comma Press, The New Hero from Stoneskin Press, and The Best British Short Stories 2011. His second story collection is out in summer 2012. To subscribe to Adam’s blog, Twitter and Facebook updates, visit www.adammarek.co.uk

Also available from this author:

Instruction Manual for Swallowing

'There's a transgressive thrill to Adam Marek's debut collection of short stories that's not simply a result of the potency of the subject matter... delightful.'
- The Guardian.

'Early McEwan meets David Cronenberg.... genuine, unsettling talent'
- The Independent.

LAUNCH EVENTS:

SUN 30 SEP - SMALL WONDER
Adam Marek with AL Kennedy and MJ Hyland
Featuring the first public reading from Adam Marek's much anticipated second collection.
6pm.
Charleston Farm House, Nr Lewes, Sussex.
More info to be announced here

THU 18 OCT - LANCASTER
Adam Marek and David Constantine
Launching their new collections,Tea at the Midland and The Stone Thrower.
See above and below.
Part of the Lancaster Literature Festival.
The Auditorium, the Storey Centre, Meeting House Lane, Lancaster LA1 1TH.
Vist LitFest.org
6.30pm.

SUN 21 OCT - MANCHESTER
Adam Marek and Guy Ware
Comma Press launch new collections from two of the most exciting short story writers in the business. Adam Marek is the winner of the 2011 Arts Foundation Fellowship in Short Story Writing, and was shortlisted for the 2010 Sunday Times EFG Award. His first collection, Instruction Manual for Swallowing, was described as ‘early McEwan meets David Cronenberg’ (Independent). Today sees the much-anticipated launch of his second collection, The Stone Thrower. Recovering civil servant Guy Ware has published stories in anthologies from Apis Books, Comma Press, Earlyworks, Route, and Leaf. His debut collection is You Have 24 Hours to Love Us.
International Anthony Burgess Foundation, Cambridge Street, Manchester.
3pm.
Book tickets here.

SAT 27 OCT - LONDON
London Launch: Adam Marek's The Stone Thrower
Marking the publication of the much anticipated second collection from the award-winning author. More details to follow.
The Story Salon, at the society club
12 Ingestre Place, Soho London, W1F OJF
6pm-8pm.
More info to follow and here.

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