Overview

A powerful debut novel charting the faultlines that open in a farming family in North Wales as they wait for their son to return from the Iraq War It is autumn 2004 and in a farmhouse on the hills outside Llandudno, Catrin and John endure the agonizing wait for their older son to return from Iraq. His decision to join up has left them reeling, yet there are other battles at home- the working of the land that has been theirs for generations and what to do with their troubled younger son. Catrin's childhood sweetheart comes back to their small town, forcing the boys' doting mother to confront the life she might have had. And John, desperate to keep farm and family together, turns to ever riskier methods to stay afloat. As each member of the family grasps at their own tenuous lifeline, they drift further from one another - until, on a cold winter evening, there is a fateful knock at the door. Written in luminous, exquisitely calibrated prose, Cloudless is a masterful portrayal of the fragility and resilience of human connection.

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9780241654712

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Reviews

Deeply moving ... Set on a hill farm in north Wales, the cycles of the natural world are rendered with the same power and exactitude as the human dramas of love and loss which exist alongside them. Beautiful and unflinching, Cloudless is a phenomenal debut. * Anna Hope * Dastur writes with devastating compassion on what it means to be human, the tension between duty and desire which eats at us all * Catherine Airey, author of Confessions * A tender portrait of a family struggling to stay afloat ... It’s beautifully written and the characters are very well drawn. The tension builds slowly as each of their emotional landscapes becomes increasingly difficult to bear ... A very assured debut * Catherine Airey, author of Confessions * Cloudless attends to the bonds we have to family, landscape, global politics with uncommon attention, extraordinary depth and lightness of touch. It's hard to believe this assured and sensitive novel is a debut * Elizabeth O'Connor, author of Whale Fall * Rupert Dastur's beautifully written, introspective and lyrical debut is perfect for fans of family dramas, rural fiction and contemplation of the human condition. He renders his characters with unflinching observational power... Dastur is especially sensitive about the ways in which our betrayals of each other are often betrayals of ourselves, indicative of our own frailty as opposed to any malice, and this lends his story a warmth and humanity that left me feeling optimistic in spite of a complex bittersweet ending * Seth Insua, author of Human, Animal * Dastur skillfully weaves a story about love and war, family and nation, addiction and recovery, all with intelligence, sensitivity and a huge heart. A must read * Paul McVeigh, author of The Good Son * Elegant and quietly devastating ... Dastur affords his characters such grace and complexity that they transcend fiction to become people you feel that you know and care for deeply * Melissa Fu, author of Peach Blossom Spring * A beautifully written exploration of family breakdown set against the background of the Iraq war ... A sparkling debut. * Sean Lusk, author of The Second Sight of Zachary Cloudesley * An accomplished, breathtaking debut novel that sweeps the reader into the hearts and minds of its characters. With muscular, precise prose, Dastur lays out the complexities hidden in the heart of a family ... The narrative is so superbly crafted and the characters so thoroughly integrated within their own landscape that the novel feels like a meeting of minds ... A wonderful work of craftsmanship and a complex, beautifully written debut * Catherine Menon, author of Fragile Monsters * This is gritty and unflinching and a realistic examination of survival and I loved it. So well written, the language is economical and the quality of the writing is so strong... It really does feel in its 298 pages that not a word or idea is wasted. * Buzz *

Author Information

Rupert Dastur is a writer, editor and publisher. His writing has been shortlisted for the Bath Short Story Award and the Fish Short Story Prize, and won the Federation of Scottish Writers Award in 2018. He is the founder of TSS Publishing and director of The Cambridge Prizes for Short Fiction, and he runs writing workshops across the UK and abroad. He read English at Cambridge University and lives in London. Cloudless is his debut novel.

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