Robert Irwin

The Runes Have Been Cast is a black comedy of darkest hue about academic and literary life set in Oxford and St Andrews in the early 60s.A tin of alphabet spaghetti brought about Lancelyns first encounter with the apparently supernatural. Unfortunately it was not to be his last. Runes, ghosts and spaghetti apart, there is much for Lancelyn to be afraid of: the future, women, Critical Theory, sex romps, The Times crossword puzzle, succubi and creative writing classes.The pages of The Runes Have Been Cast are haunted by M.R. James, Thomas de Quincey, Mr. Raven, St. Ignatius of Loyola, Iron Foot Jack, J.R.R. Tolkien and an anonymous tramp.This is novel is great fun. Irwin mocks all and sundry while introducing us to some of the darker recesses of English and even Scottish literature as well as to the 1960s second hand books scene in London. I do not think that I can have read a novel which makes so many references to actual works that I have never heard off. With a fairly complex plot, ghosts popping in and out, strange but colourful academics, much mirth and mockery, two young men too full of themselves, a rampaging sex goddess, lots of interesting books and authors, intertextuality galore, the idea of God as a novelist, immersive literature and Tolkien and his bloody elves, this book is a thoroughly enjoyable read.

A masterpiece of historical fantasy and fetid imagination. -Time Out Highly acclaimed cult novelist, historian and literary critic.

This is the story of Sonja Heda and her rise from humble beginnings as a waitress in Holland to walk-on appearances in such famous German films of the Weimar and Nazi eras as The Blue Angel, The Gypsy Baron, Jew Suss, Habanera, Munchausen and, eventually, the starring role in the Nazi screwball comedy Bagdad Capers. Joseph and Magda Goebbels, Hans Albers, Eva Braun, Lillian Harvey, Albert Speer, Marika Rokk since she knew them all, it was inevitable that she should think of writing her autobiography. Though she does not get very far with it, she does pass idle moments composing the reviews she hopes to get for My Life Is like a Fairy Tale: Sonja Hedas stunning autobiography left this reviewer feeling that life is so unfair, for not only can she act and dance, but she can write and how she can write! . . . At last the book that takes the lid off the steamy world of German film-making . . . An insightful portrait of the Nazi elite by the beautiful woman who was at its centre. But this fairy story, a narrative of diminishing options and the advance to death and destruction, is very dark indeed and perhaps that is the nature of both fairy tale and supremacist ideology.

It is Palm Sunday 1461 and the bloodiest battle ever fought on English soil is about to take place outside the village of Towton. It is one of a series of engagements between the houses of York and Lancaster. The world when younger was more brightly coloured and its ecstasies and tortures more fiercely endured. But, ever since the Dolorous Stroke and the Showing of the Grail in the days of King Arthur, England has lain under a curse. So many have died that Hell is now full and consequently the dead stalk the land.Anthony Woodville, Lord Scales, having been killed at Towton, is vouchsafed the first of many strange visions before being resurrected. From then on adventures come running after him like hungry dogs and he will encounter the Swordsmans Pentacle, the Draug, the Miraculous Cauldron, the Curse of the Roasted Goose, the Talking Head and the Museum of Skulls.The real world is a poor thing compared to the stories that are told about it. Anthony hears or takes part in many stories, and those stories are porous, so that men and monsters move easily in and out of them. The stories that Anthony encounters have only one purpose and it is not a good one.

Sex, drugs, satanism, rock and roll and the 1960s. Irwin is a writer of immense subtlety and craftmanship, and offers us a vivid and utterly convincing portrait of life on the loopier fringes of the Sixties. Satan Wants Me is black, compulsive and very, very funny. Christopher Hart in The Daily Telegraph Irwins writing is witty and scabrous but it is also subtle in a way that keeps catching the reader out. The blend of the fantastical with the philosophical has been the defining characteristic of Irwins fiction and in Peters drug-drenched, satan-haunted diary, it has found its perfect expression. Tom Holland in The New Statesman & Society Part of the books fertile comedy stems from the ironic interweaving of the jargons of sociology, hippiedom and magick. It is hard to resist a pot-head mystic who hopes the Apocalypse will come on Wednesday because it will break up the week. Tom Deveson in The Sunday Times He is a first-rate, startling novelist; Satan Wants Me and Exquisite Corpse, are both about the irruption of exotic intellectual movements - Satanism and surrealism - into the calm procession of English life. Both could be wonderfully funny books, but are always fascinatingly tempted by the possibility of becoming something bigger, blacker, more quietly distressing. Philip Hensher in The Spectator Robert Irwins Satan Wants Me was a mad confection of black magic and 60s sexual liberation, a paranoid fantasy that drew heavily on the legacy of Aleister Crowley, but achieved a wonderful lightness of touch. Alex Clark in The Guardians Books of the Year

Novel about love and madness amongst the British surrealists.

A novel about the psychology of terrorism set in algiers in 1959. "Entertaining and very nasty, this calculatedly intellectual comedy succeeds well as an unheroic quest starring Philippe, an interesting monster of disarming modesty." The Listener

«Imaginaba a las damas del harén, a sus anchas al otro lado de los muros de la jaula. Se entretejían mutuamente trenzas; se ejercitaban en el bordado; rasgueaban el dulcimer; fumaban narguiles; estudiaban libros sobre la manera de procurar el placer a los hombres; se rascaban y aguardaban a su amo.» Y cuando Orjan es liberado de su cautividad en el harén imperial se ve rodeado de concubinas que lo proclaman sultán. Pero en esta deliciosa novela de extraño erotismo, nada es como parece, y Orjan, en cualquier caso, está muy lejos de ser el amo de sus odaliscas. Tentación, seducción y magia, cocodrilos o un ejército de genios diminutos son algunas de las armas empleadas por nuestras malvadas huríes, que engatusan a Orjan y lo arrastran paso a paso hacia un desenlace tan placentero como fatal.

La Alhambra, el castillo rojo, situada en su colina rocosa sobre Granada, ha sido durante mucho tiempo un sinónimo de exótica y melancólica belleza. La Alhambra es el único palacio musulmán medieval que se conserva. Construida por la ultima dinastia de al-Andalus, la de los Nazaries, fue mantenida como un monumento al triunfo de la Cristiandad. Cada dia miles de turistas son hechizados por este magnifico lugar, por sus torres y patios, por sus fuentes y jardines, por sus techumbres de mocarabes y sus complejos alicatados. Su decoracion altamente sofisticada no es casual, sino que esta llena de significados escondidos. Sus edificios mas esplendidos no fueron diseñados por arquitectos, sino por filosofos y poetas. La Alhambra ha influido considerablemente en el arte y en la literatura, en la pintura orientalista, en Washington Irving y en Borges. Robert Irwin nos ayuda a comprender esa historia con todo detalle.

Set in London, Paris and Munich in the 1940s and 50s, this story is narrated by Caspar who details his investigations into sex, surrealism, hypnagogic imagery, waxworks, mass observation, Nazi art and mesmerism. Above all, he recounts his obsessive quest for a vanishing woman.

A novel about housework featuring Mucor , the spirit of dust and Charles Dickens. "Very funny: it sparkles with brilliance and has a truly superb ending. I confidently predict that there will never be a better novel about housework." The Fantasy Review

Nada es lo que parece en El Cairo de finales del siglo XV, una ciudad misteriosa, rebosante de engaños e intrigas. Este es el exótico lugar donde Balian, un espía inglés contratado por el rey de Francia, cae bajo los efectos de la pesadilla arabiga. La misteriosa enfermedad hara que realidad, fantasia y sueño se entremezclen en una seductora atmosfera propia de los mundos de Las mil y una noches.

With the capture of Granada in 1492, Ferdinand and Isabella dispossessed the Arabs of their last territory in Spain. The Alhambra, with its towers, courtyards, fountains, gardens, and tiled mosaics, remains perhaps the greatest monument on European soil to the splendour of Muslim architecture, matched only by the beauty of the Great Mosque at nearby Cordoba, though tragically and grotesquely despoiled by the construction of a Catholic church in its centre. On my visits to Granada I have always been struck not only by the beautiful symmetry of the architecture but by the sheer opulence of the palace, confirming my belief that architecture is the greatest art form of Islamic culture. In his book, Robert Irwin delves into the chambers and corridors of the Alhambra to expound the often bloody events that occurred within, as well as into the history of its creation under various Arab rulers. Furthermore, he goes on to write of the effect the palace has had on subsequent visitors, such as Washington Irving, Chateaubriand, and M. C. Escher. This is a very readable book, ideal as an accompaniment for those who visit Andalusia.

In recent times Orientalists have been variously accused of imperialism, colonialism and distorting history. Robert Irwin powerfully overturns this view and radically reassesses their influence and legacy: he makes the definitive case for the Orientalists. Irwin charts the origins of Orientalism and its foremost practitioners, from Ancient Greece up to the present day. In doing so, he finally banishes the ghosts of Edward Said's Orientalism and shows that, whether making philological comparisons between Arabic and Hebrew, cataloguing the coins of Fatimid Egypt or establishing the basic chronology of Harun al-Rashid's military campaigns against Byzantium, scholars have been unified not by politics or by ideology but by their shared obsession. For Lust of Knowing is an extraordinary, passionate book, both a sustained argument and a brilliant work of original scholarship.

Toms Version is a lament for the sixties and then a mad race towards old age and death. Hovering in background are the ghostly presences of St Ignatius of Loyola, St Joseph of Copertino, Robert Louis Stevenson and M.R. James. This is the story of a story that plays out in real life. Tom is a stock controller. Though management of the shelves kept him busy in the daytime, his nights were frightful. Again and again he dreamt of guns, conjuring tricks, car chases, burials, disinterments, Martian landscapes and Molly . Tom is new to the Story as it was known to the sinister crew who first appeared in The Ruins Have Been Cast. They make their reappearance in this new novel.... .Molly is a hoplophiliac, Quentin is the sort of person who knows what a hoplophiliac is (someone who likes the use of guns in sex), Lancelyn is terrified of women, Jaimie has committed murder in order to understand what it is like to be evil, Ferdie is a conjuror with bad breath, Bernard is an expert on ghost stories, Mortimer is a thug who works at the The Times Literary Supplement. But Tom is just so ordinary (apart from his visions of Fairyland).