White Chappell, Scarlet Tracings

By Iain Sinclair

Book Overview

'In this extraordinary work Sinclair combines a sort of spiritual inquest or seance into the Whitechapel Ripper murders and the dark side of the late Victorian imagination with another plot-thread, done in hectic picaresque, of a posse of seedy book dealers hot on the trail of obscure rarities of that period. These ruined and ruthless dandies appear and disappear through a phantasmagoria - Dickensian London gripped by cholera, the shambles of a Victorian surgeon's operating theatre, vultures flapping around the Farringdon Road bookstalls as the ropes come off - interspersed with occult conjurings and reflections on the nature of fiction and history.'

So wrote a critic for London's Guardian newspaper, which chose Iain Sinclair's brilliantly original debut novel, White Chappell, Scarlet Tracings (1987), as runner-up for the prestigious Guardian Fiction Prize. This first-ever American edition features a new introduction by Alan Moore, whose graphic novel From Hell was partly inspired by Sinclair's novel.

'Iain Sinclair, in White Chappell, Scarlet Tracings, has provided much more than a brilliant debut ... a manifesto for a future literature that has more blood, more brains, and more mysterious beauty ... Those who aspire to understand what's happening in modern writing should start here.' - Alan Moore, from the Introduction

'A work of integrity because it constantly takes serious risks ... I only wish there was more writing like this.' - Kathy Acker

'A stimulating and idiosyncratic visionary novel, full of lively characters and bizarre humour.' - Michael Moorcock

'Sentence for sentence, there is no more interesting writer at work in English.' - John Lanchester, Daily Telegraph

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1941147844
• ISBN13: 9781941147849
• Release Date: August 2015
• Publisher: Valancourt Books
• Length: 184 Pages
• Weight: 0.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.0" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Dirty and dangerous

Iain Sinclair knows the mythical paths of London like no-one else. In poetic often painfully intense prose, he conjures up the half-dead spirits that stalk the streets of this seedy town. The landscape is dominated by dodgy second-hand book dealers skulking in the shadows obsessed by the Ripper murders, and by the vicious presence of Jack himself, the embodiement of powerful evil forces embedded in the fabric of the city. If you only ever read one novel about Jack the Ripper, or never wanted to read one, White Chappell, Scarlet Tracings is a must. A warning though: it is not for the faint-hearted.