Book description
C follows the short, intense life of Serge Carrefax, a
man who - as his name suggests - surges into the electric modernity of
the early twentieth century, transfixed by the technologies that will
obliterate him.
Born to the sound of one of the very earliest experimental wireless
stations, Serge finds himself steeped in a weird world of
transmissions, whose very air seems filled with cryptic and poetic
signals of all kinds. When personal loss strikes him in his
adolescence, this world takes on a darker and more morbid aspect. What
follows is a stunning tour de force in which the eerily idyllic
settings of pre-war Europe give way to the exhilarating flight-paths
of the frontline aeroplane radio operator, then the prison camps of
Germany, the drug-fuelled London of the roaring twenties and, finally,
the ancient tombs of Egypt.
Tom McCarthy was born in 1969 and grew up in London. His creation, in
1999, of the International Necronautical Society (INS), a
'semi-fictitious organisation' that combines literature, art and
philosophy, has led to publications, installations and exhibitions in
galleries and museums around the world, from Tate Britain and the ICA in
London to Moderna Museet in Stockholm and The Drawing Center in New
York. Tom regularly writes on literature and art for publications
including
The New York Times
,
The London Review of Books
and
Artforum
.
