Author(s): Cynan Jones

Novel | Wales | Fiction Reductions

Water is commodified. The Water Train that serves the city increasingly at risk of sabotage.

As news breaks that construction of a gigantic Ice Dock will displace more people than first thought, protestors take to the streets and the lives of several individuals begin to interlock. A nurse on the brink of an affair. A boy who follows a stray dog out of the city. A woman who lies dying. And her husband, a marksman: a man forged by his past and fearful of the future, who weighs in his hands the possibility of death against the possibility of life.

From one of the most celebrated writers of his generation, Stillicide is a moving story of love and loss and the will to survive, and a powerful glimpse of the tangible future.

Review: As a tract of written language, [Stillicide] is close to perfect. As a repository for ideas, it is imaginative and far reaching. As a story of and for our times, it is very human, and deadly serious... blunt perfection * Guardian *
How big this small book is, giving the barest details of its future world...exciting, upsetting and essential * Financial Times *
Jones lets the contours of his chilly prophecy emerge in glimpses, leaving [...] plenty of white space for the reader's imagination * Metro *
A tense and moving love story...high-stake miniatures that expertly convey the impression of time moving but also staying still... unforgettable * Daily Mail *
I thought there were moments of beautiful poetry in this. . . A very strong atmosphere -- Laurence Scott * BBC Radio 4 Saturday Review *
Twelve sparely written but moving tales of near-future water shortages and overpopulation * New Scientist *
[Jones] brings tenderness and a haunting lyricism to an affecting novel...Jones is known for the perfect economy of his novels, and this is no exception, a novel whose urgent message is rendered no less powerful for the beauty of its delivery -- Welsh Book of the Month * Waterstones *
A more powerful parable [...] is hard to imagine...Wonderfully pared back and impressionistic * Scotsman *
A piece of superb hardboiled noir... Stillicide has an enigmatic, surging power...This is a novella that seeks to alientate us from our grip on language and from our everyday taken-for-granted understanding of reality...powerful and disturbing * New Welsh Review *
Jones's book is written in a striking imagistic style that makes it vividly convincing * Sunday Times *

Author Biography: Cynan Jones was born in 1975 near Aberaeron, Wales where he now lives and works. He is the author of five short novels, The Long Dry, Everything I Found on the Beach, Bird, Blood, Snow, The Dig, and Cove. He has been longlisted and shortlisted for numerous prizes and won a Society of Authors Betty Trask Award 2007, a Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize 2014, the Wales Book of the Year Fiction Prize 2015 and the BBC National Short Story Award 2017. His short fiction has been widely published in anthologies and publications including Granta Magazine and The New Yorker.