Ten over-lit comic tales of perverted domestic bliss from the shores of a post-apocalyptic seaside resort somewhere between Blackpool and Atlantic City. Life, memory and social habits have all changed, inverted and become confused since the sea washed away most of what existed before in The Great Arising. The tales of Bertie and Cara’s married life rise and fall between cruelty, sentimentality and a nobility of squalor.
The Lowly of the title is the collective name given to a variety of creatures that have been bred from human and animal genes as slaves to the surviving populace, attempting to make the world ‘normal’ again and deny all the inconvenient histories of the past. Slow-witted and charmingly innocent they are limited beings that stand in stark contrast to the selfish spite and bigotry of their masters.
B. Catling is a sculptor, poet, performance artist, film maker and novelist, whose recent VORRH trilogy has won great critical and public acclaim. His fictional works are currently being adapted for film and long sequence TV series. He is also a Royal Academician and Emeritus Professor in Fine Art at the Ruskin School of Art, University of Oxford.
‘Brian Catling is simply a genius. His writing is so extraordinary it hurts. It makes me realise how little imagination I have.’
- Terry Gilliam
‘Very weird, very wonderful – the blind prophet gives warning, opens our eyes and offers a counter spell.’
- Marina Warner
