FOX FIRES
2021 (Salt Publishing)
A lost girl and a sprawling map of an unsettling city.
Wren Lithgow has followed her concert pianist mother around the cities of Europe for almost two decades. When they arrive in the mysterious city-state of O, where Wren was conceived during a time of civil war, she resolves to find man she believes is her father.
As the city closes in around her, Wren gives herself over to a place of which she understands nothing, but to which she feels a profound connection, in a story of the watchers and the watched, the ways in which we conceive of home and, finally, the possibility of living on our own terms.
‘Fox Fires, Wyl Menmuir’s moving, mesmerising account of one bewildered girl adrift in a spy-soaked city, is like Kafka dished up by Calvino – that’s to say, it’s unnerving, magical, provoking, and the work of a fertile and powerful imagination.’
Jim Crace
Twenty writers, one scene.
20 writers including Max Porter, Abir Mukherjee, Sarah Leipciger, Jan Carson, Cathy Rentzenbrink, Graham Macrae Burnet and Yara Rodrigues Fowler read from the opening chapter of Fox Fires.