Stewart Home est un auteur britannique connu pour son approche satirique et avant-gardiste de la littérature. Ses œuvres parodient souvent les genres conventionnels, employant des techniques telles que l'appropriation de tropes pulp et le collage postmoderne. Home n'hésite pas à expérimenter avec la forme, comme en témoigne son style de performance non conventionnel lors des lectures. Son écriture met les lecteurs au défi, les obligeant à confronter leur propre complaisance.
Ray 'The Cat' Jones, originally aspiring to be the middleweight boxing champion, became infamous as a legendary cat burglar. His notoriety stems from his daring escape from London's Pentonville Prison in 1958 and a series of bold thefts that captured public attention. This tale explores his transformation from a hopeful athlete to a notorious figure in the criminal underworld, highlighting his audacity and cunning.
Strange things happen on social media, such as the almost chance encounter between a London born-and-bred fitness instructor and a drug-fueled Spanish witch. At first Maria Remedios and Martin Cooper share their love for super-dumb, two-chord stomp in private messages, but when they meet magic happens. Maria knows that she and Martin have been lovers in past lives, and sets out to convince the former skinhead that her occult beliefs are true.
Merced Es Benz is an account of a dysfunctional love affair, narrated via SMS, email, Facebook and Google search results. Events unfold against a backdrop of a barely-credible pre-Olympic London where Bow E3’s high-rises are no longer the Ends and east London’s awful art parties, populated by the debased progeny of the rich and famous, do little to dispel 90s rave nostalgia. Remnants of a ‘virtual’ conversation act as a body of circumstantial evidence, betraying a ‘real’ intimacy behind a messy social media scandal that spilled into tabloid coverage. Iphgenia Baal’s non-fiction novel balances at the jarring intersection of death, mourning and Facebook, as downward mobility proves to be a more intoxicating – if less fatal – drug than heroin. It is published as part of the Semina series, commissioned and edited by Stewart Home, that also featured books by Bridget Penney, Jarett Kobek, Katrina Palmer, Jana Leo and Mark Waugh, as well as Stewart Home himself. Following a career as a journalist, which came to no uncertain end in 2008, Iphgenia Baal is now a writer. Published prior to Merced Es Benz are the books The Hardy Tree and Gentle Art, assorted serialised ephemera, including The Seedless Grape and The Shiner. Some texts have been adapted for film, including Heavy Vibrations and Topshop Returns. She has contributed to the Nervemeter, International Times, the White Review, Schizm and others and is one half of publishing imprint AKA. Published as part of Book Works’ Semina series (No.8). Edited by Stewart Home.