Souvenir
'The best evocation I've read of London in the '80s' Neil Tennant
'I loved Souvenir . . . it rescued some things for me - a certain aesthetic, a philosophical engagement with time and poignant beauty and lived history that I have found myself looking for, and not finding, elsewhere in recent years . . . the book gave me new hope' John Burnside
'A suspended act of retrieval, a partisan recall; a sustained, subtle summary of our recent past, and an epitaph for a future we never had' Philip Hoare
'Michael Bracewell proves himself to be nothing less than the poet laureate of late capitalism' Jonathan Coe
A vivid eulogy for London of the late 1970s and early 80s - the last years prior to the rise of the digital city. An elliptical, wildly atmospheric remembrance of the sites and soundtrack, at once aggressively modern and strangely elegiac, that accompanied the twilight of one era and the dawn of another. Haunted bedsits, post-punk entrepreneurs in the Soho Brasserie, occultists in Fitzrovia, Docklands before Canary Wharf, frozen suburbs in the winter of 1980...
Michael Bracewell is the author of six novels and two works of non-fiction including SAINT RACHEL, PERFECT TENSE, REMAKE/REMODEL and ENGLAND IS MINE.
His writing has been published in THE FABER BOOK OF POP and a selection of his writings on art and culture, THE SPACE BETWEEN was published in 2012.
He has written widely on modern and contemporary art, most notably about the work of Bridget Riley and Richard Hamilton on the occasion of recent exhibitions of their work at The National Gallery, London. Also on the art of Damien Hirst and Gilbert & George for the Tate Gallery, London.
His most recent publications include the Introduction to a new edition of Oscar Wilde's classic essay, 'The Critic As Artist'.