These Demented Lands

the long version

Alan Warner has a gift greater than the gift of telling a story. He can make what he chooses to tell us seem like a story we were waiting to hear' Adam Mars-Jones, ObserverAn aircrash investigator haunts the hinterlands of an island - around the isolated honeymoon hotspot, the Drome Hotel - gathering the fallen pieces of planes that have been used in makeshift sheds and fences; but what kind of jigsaw is he really is he really assembling as he paces the runway? A young woman makes landfall on the island, crossing the interior to arrive at the Drome Hotel: desperate, strange - and strangely familiar. . . Meanwhile, DJ Cormorant is trying to organise The Big One, a rave on the adjacent airstrip, and from all over These Demented Lands come twisted characters - The Arganout, the Knife Sharpener, The Devil's Advocate and the Crazed troupe of Cattle rovers - converging for one final Saturday night at the Drome Hotel