After Darke
'A riot of eloquent bigotry and bluster' THE TIMES BEST BOOKS OF 2022
'Unbroken, unbowed and raging against the wokeness of the modern world' MAIL ON SUNDAY BEST NEW FICTION
Released from prison after serving his sentence for the assisted death of his wife, his health failing and his chronic impatience exacerbated, Dr James Darke self-isolates. But on his return he understands that he is now a displaced person, lost in a new world for which his education and inclinations have not prepared him.
Irascible, misanthropic, intensely bookish, fastidious in his tastes and rich enough to indulge them, Darke is a happy shut-in, busily writing oppositional pamphlets and composing a literary hoax. But his daughter and the Bulgarian housekeeper she hired to look after him have other ideas.
After Darke is a moving, witty reflection on grief, ageing and love in all its forms, and James Darke is one of the most memorable, exasperating yet loveable characters of contemporary fiction.
Rick Gekoski is a novelist and writer of non-fiction, a rare bookseller and former academic, publisher, bibliographer, literary journalist and broadcaster. A Booker Prize Judge in 2005, Chair of Judges for the 2011 Man Booker International Prize, a life-time Vice President of English PEN and former board member of the Arvon Foundation, he has some fifty years of experience of the English literary scene.
As such he is well-placed, through this new work of fiction, to cast an eye over the changes that have taken place in contemporary literary discourse. His hero, or perhaps anti-hero, but certainly not alter ego, one Dr James Darke, is an elderly Oxbridge curmudgeon, deeply at odds with the new cultural insistence on diversity and inclusivity.
His author wishes it to be clear that James Darke's opinions are entirely his own.