Bücher von John Fraser

What is victory? What would victory actually be in our present world? What would revolution be - and what would happen after?In John Fraser's latest novel, Mack meets an old combatant, a revolutionary, his revolution accomplished: satisfied. He leaves his girlfriend Sophie, but never shakes her off. He tries revealed religion, mysticism, sex. Through his showy friend, Paco, he meets Aurora - a flaky performer, a woman every man would die for her. He tries to define what's on the inside from the outside - specifically, a poor, resource-rich country, between revolt and foreign intervention.He joins a committee deciding between a project for reform: justice: complicity ... or colluding with a persecuted opposition. Complexity gradually comes to prevail... He takes refuge in isolation, a leisure centre-cum retreat, where political plotting carries on, a kind of Mongol wave may be in preparation. He recoils: neither reform nor revolutionary onslaught - both certainty, predictability, that is, and destruction - are to his taste.As his latest girl is seduced by his new best friend, he returns to the beginning: for tomorrow is the victory…

The most recent work of fiction by John Fraser, hailed as 'the most original novelist of our time' by the distinguished poet and Whitbread Award winner John Fuller, Sisters is a contemporary reworking of Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard.The protagonist, Masha, a young woman with a rich MiddleEastern culture, is forced by war to leave her country, her sisters, and even change her name. Abandoning her training as a surgeon, she is involved in an innovative scientific venture - superconductors. Intrigued by the philosophical aspects of her work - energy, time and distance - she seeks new 'sisters' and tries to assert herself in the unfamiliar cultures and human projects she encounters. After many adventures she finds two sisters in an idyllic tree house, but provokes the accidental death of one of them. She follows the other sister to a utopian commune in Brazil - but the group is in effervescence and conflict. The two take refuge on an island, involved in illicit chemistry this time - but there are conflicts with the native inhabitants. She meets up with a predatory dealer in cultural artefacts, and this ends badly. Her relation with a musician who pushes her to political celebrity also ends badly. She tries reconciliation with her 'sister', who has chosen a 'primitive' lifestyle, 'back to the forest....' In the end she's taken up by Irene, who is occupied in a big house with a laboratory equipped for research in space travel. She finds affection, but in an echo of the Chekhovian theme which runs through the plot, the train which promises escape in the Cherry Orchard finds an ironic resonance in the expedient of space travel and re-location.

The Magnificent Wurlitzer is an epic work of literary fiction, divided into four parts. Its theme is that of the 'guilty Faust' on a fantastic, grotesque journey seeking his truth, his Mephistopheles. Its hero treads in the footsteps of epics from East and West, Gilgamesh, the Ramayana, Götterdämmerung.

In Down from the Stars, John Fraser's latest speculative novel, an assistant to a distinguished astrophysicist, is tormented by the fate of the Soviet space dog, Laika, incinerated above the earth. Losing the confidence of his master, and losing his girlfriend, he is increasingly drawn into local political life. Having an affinity with the arts, he becomes responsible for the policy of art tourism, which, with organised crime, is the speciality of the place. After many adventures and disasters, and growing complicity with criminality, a new boss forces him and his associates to leave. Destitute, and disillusioned with science and art, he makes an approach to nature, visiting an African wildlife lodge. He is joined by an associate, a former dancer. Together, he decides, they will rise again, and resume their destinies as 'stars.'

The latest tour de force in speculative fiction from John Fraser. The 'Military Roads' of this book, which consists of three tales running consecutively, are, first, the adventures of a narrator following the fortunes of a leader of a revolution in a distant country: second, a journey starting in the 'military road' which in Soviet times and before, ran from Moscow to the Caucasus: and finally, a mission undertaken from Italy, through North Africa, with the aim of recruiting a private army of bodyguards for a global tycoon. The narrator's amorous adventures, and his struggles to survive these radical shifts of place, commitment and perspective, conclude with a sweet-and-sour relationship with his boss's partner, and a precarious acceptance of traditional religious practices. The military roads, it is supposed, will continue to be travelled, with results which never achieve a lasting resolution, but provide temporary satisfaction for some, at least, of the protagonists.

John Fraser's last work of fiction, Hard Places, was a series of novellas concerning physical and moral dilemmas, left unresolved at the expense of the protagonist. This sequel, Soft Landing, is the opposite - a novel of quest and adventure, in which scruple is overcome, and demanding or impossible situations have outcomes favourable to the hero. The trail takes us from urban violence to Eldorado, the regime of a bikers' club, and the secret finds of a prospectors' camp. The last section shows all puzzles solved, and the protagonists' return home with gifts. In keeping with the tale's sour vision of a crumbling present, the landing though soft, is not pleasant.

Two novellas by John Fraser, Blue Light and Starting Over, conclude a quadrilogy whose previous volumes comprised The Red Tank, Runners and Medusa.We may like to imagine what the end of the world is like - it's not dissimilar to our own end. Blue Light shows what it's like, the running down, the onset of rigor mortis - and the new life sprouting, notwithstanding. Living for ever may not be too bad - but do you really want it? When the world has ended, how attractive is rebirth, or resurrection? Starting Over may mean you have to piece a whole new world together - just using the ruins of the past. The poet John Fuller writes: 'In Fraser's fiction the reader rides as on a switchback or luge of impetuous attention, with effects flashing by at virtuoso speeds. The characters seem to be unwitting agents of chaos, however much wise reflection Fraser bestows upon them; they move with shrugging self-assurance through circumstances as richly detailed and as without reliable compass-points as a Chinese scroll.'

Hard Places consists of three novellas, Red Snow, The Rock and The Sea. They concern human struggles with Nature and human natures. Red Snow involves efforts to have the better of chance by gaming, and the forms of self-discipline this requires. The Rock shows the eternal certainties of art crumbling into inexplicable absences and shady deals. The Sea evokes our longing for submersion in nature when we wish to conceal our misdeeds and rejections.

John Fraser's Medusa is a stunning fable for our times, in which the stories of Medusa, the Gorgon and the French ship Medusa are intertwined to create a Pilgrim's Progress for the 21st century.'Medusa is a trip, a bending of the legends. It is a symphonic poem, where at the end, we even hear a few notes of a hymn to joy. The fragments of myth, legend and belief drift round like harmonies that seek resolution. But this mode is post-modern, post-Christian; it is about the end - yet there is no end: it is story. The resulting tale is an apocryphal blast and a literary tour de force that uncannily captures the zeitgeist.' (Jean-Paul Bouler)'In Fraser's fiction the reader rides as on a switchback or luge of impetuous attention, with effects flashing by at virtuoso speeds. The characters seem to be unwitting agents of chaos, however much wise reflection Fraser bestows upon them; they move with shrugging self-assurance through circumstances as richly detailed and as without reliable compass-points as a Chinese scroll.' (John Fuller)

In Runners John Fraser delivers, in his unique, distinct voice, the story of a kind of redemption - even a kind of utopia - or as much of a utopia as we can possibly expect, given what we know about most of our political leaders ...An unelected leader buys the office of deputy mayor. Although this 'boss' is a monster, he also has a rare, enlightened side. Where other leaders cling to power, he runs - but instead of running for office, he runs from office; he and his friends become the Runners - the running dogs.Runners is a contemporary remake of Machiavelli's Prince with a nod to Gramsci's 'Modern Prince', the revolutionary party. It is a tale of complicity between leaders, the nature of political friendships and loyalties, the contradictions between leaders and electors, between democratic rhetoric and practice, the leadership and the base - the urban and feathered - the volatility, adaptability and motivations of leaders, and of the pursuit of justice in the personal, incongruous instance; the machismo of political culture.'In Fraser's fiction the reader rides as on a switchback or luge of impetuous attention, with effects flashing by at virtuoso speeds. The characters seem to be unwitting agents of chaos, however much wise reflection Fraser bestows upon them; they move with shrugging self-assurance through circumstances as richly detailed and as without reliable compass-points as a Chinese scroll.' (John Fuller)

The Red Tank is a contemporary literary novel by a dazzlingly inventive writer looking anew at the human project in the globalised 21st century as though from a Martian point of view, through myths, fables, utopias and dystopias of modern and future life.

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