Inside every Fat Git there's an Enchanter wildly signalling to be let out.

Alan Richardson is back with a ground-breaking esoteric satire, The Fat Git, with a rip-roaring cast of characters including Ambrose Hart, the Merlin of Strathnaddair; his reluctant nephew, Arthur; the mythical seductress, Vivienne, and the dastardly evil Vortig. Richardson takes no prisoners with his take on psychic pretentiousness, taking mythical simulacra and Arthurian archetypes to levels of absurdity, yet always displaying trenchant psychological insights and a sound background in the deeper aspects of occultism. This mix of mundane and fantastic, at wild odds with each other, is reminiscent of the work of Charles Williams, and perhaps one or two of his fellow Inklings. Richardson does not hold back from lambasting certain quarters with his iconoclastic wit but seems to be saying something that needs to be said. With great humour and panache, he provides a riveting burlesque of modern magic and the Arthurian Mysteries.

"If Strathnaddair exists in another realm, and yet is also a real place that we have all visited, then so are The Arthur, The Merlin and all the rest real people, with addresses, postcodes, mortgages, debts, and all the troubles and triumphs of modern life. You can find them in any phone book, just look under your own name. For there are moments when, if only for the blink of an eye and on the canvas behind its lid, we become them…”

ISBN: 978-1-908011-31-2
Copyright: Alan Richardson
Language: English
Pages: 146  
Binding: perfect-bound paperback
Interior print: black & white
Dimensions: 203mm tall × 133mm wide (8 x 5.02 inches)

Published January 19th 2012

£9.99

$15.99