The Last London: True Fictions from an Unreal City
The Last London: True Fictions from an Unreal City
Iain Sinclair
Oneworld
9781786071743
Iain Sinclair has been documenting the peculiar magic of the river-city that absorbs and obsesses him for most of his adult life. In The Last London, he strikes out on a series of solitary walks and collaborative expeditions to make a final reckoning with a capital stretched beyond recognition. Here is a mesmerising record of secret scholars and whispering ghosts. Of disturbing encounters. Night hospitals. Pits that become cameras. Mole Man labyrinths. And privileged swimming pools, up in clouds, patrolled by surveillance helicopters. Where now are the myths, the ultimate fictions of a many times revised city?
Travelling from the pinnacle of the Shard to the outer limits of the London Overground system at Croydon and Barking, from the Thames Estuary to the future ruins of Olympicopolis, Sinclair reflects on where London begins and where it ends. A memoir, a critique and a love letter, The Last London stands as a delirious conclusion to a truly epic project.
"An unconventional, atmospheric exploration of London from one its most unique chroniclers.... Readers interested in the history of London will greatly enjoy tracing the author's walks, and even those who think they know everything about London may be pleasantly surprised. This is no ordinary memoir, but we wouldn't expect such from one of England's most inventive psychogeographic writers."
--Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review
226 page hardcover
Oneworld, 2018
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Categories: Books | Iain Sinclair
