MANITUANA

 

By WU MING

 

NEW IN PAPERBACK

 

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“Their books sizzle with a kind of lefty jazz: they're linguistically and culturally hip, historically astute, with a heart worn challengingly on the sleeve ... Manituana unspools mesmerizingly like an old Hollywood movie.” Todd McEwen, Guardian

 

“A highly compelling epic of great beauty and power.” Daily Mail

 

“Manituana shuns anachronism as it sets about delivering a fast-flowing, densely peopled, richly decorated story of s precious way of life, and thought, on the brink of the modern abyss.” Boyd Tonkin, The Independent

 

 

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The camera-shy clandestine quartet WU MING, formerly part of the explosive Luther Blissett movement, will be making rare appearances in London to talk about their novel MANITUANA:

 

11 October at Café Oto, Dalston. For more details and to book:

http://www.cafeoto.co.uk/wu-ming-foundation.shtm

 

12 October at Pages of Hackney, Hackney. For more details:

http://pagesofhackney.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=48&Itemid=53

 

13 October at the British Library, King’s Cross. For more details and to book:

http://www.versobooks.com/events/16-growing-knowledge-wu-ming-present-manituana

 

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Like their bestselling cult novel, Q (1999), which was written under the nom-de-plume of Luther Blissett, Manituana is a painstakingly researched, politically urgent, bawdy and violent epic novel written like a thriller: a cinematic adventure revealing the landscape of the American Revolution from the perspective of the losers in official history.

 

The novel is a story from the wrong side of history, when everything was still possible. It is a story about the bloody birth of a nation and its cost, the tragic destruction of many other possible worlds.

 

This story begins in 1775, when the conflict between the British Empire and the American colonies erupts in an all-out war. Rebels and loyalists to the British Crown compete for an alliance with the Six Nations of the Iroquois, the most powerful indigenous tribal group in the Mohawk River valley.

 

The colonists and the tribe have co-existed for generations but now they must take sides, gravely endangering the future of their mixed world – a great community of Native Americans, Irishmen and Scots. As the thunder of war approaches and the nascent United States struggles violently to be born, old bonds are broken, friends and families are split apart by betrayal and this world becomes a scene of hatred and resentment.

 

To save his threatened world, the Mohawk war chief, Joseph Brant Thayendanegea, makes a painful decision. Setting off with a group of Iroquois warriors and English fighters, he leaves the only land he has ever known in a restless journey that will take him from New York to the salons of Georgian London at the heart of the British Empire, knowing that the road back will be paved with war.

 

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WU MING is a collective of four fiction writers. Their bestselling books include the novel Q, written under the pseudonym of Luther Blissett, and 54. Their website is www.wumingfoundation.com. Manituana’s interactive website is www.manituana.com.

 

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ISBN 978 1 84467 624 8 / $16.95 / £8.99 / $21.00CAN / Paperback / 484 pages

 

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For more information about the book and to buy, visit Verso’s shiny new website: http://www.versobooks.com/books/469-manituana

 

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