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Lament for the Fallen
  • Published: 15 June 2017
  • ISBN: 9781784161330
  • Imprint: Black Swan
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 432
  • RRP: $29.99

Lament for the Fallen

Formats & editions
EBook
28 July 2016
Paperback
15 June 2017
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Perfect for fans of David Mitchell, Michel Faber and J G Ballard, this darkly compelling literary debut tells a thrilling story that is shot through with hope and a transcendent sense of wonder.

A strange craft falls from the stars and crashes into the jungle near an isolated West African community. Inside, the locals discover the broken body of a man unlike any they have seen before - a man who is perhaps something more than human.

His name is Samara and he speaks with terror of a place called Tartarus - an orbiting prison where hope doesn't exist.

As Samara begins to heal, he also transforms the lives his rescuers. But in so doing, he attracts the attention of a warlord whose gunmen now threaten the very existence of the villagers themselves - and the one, slim chance Samara has of finding his way home.

And all the while, in the darkness above, waits the simmering fury at the heart of Tartarus . . .
  • Published: 15 June 2017
  • ISBN: 9781784161330
  • Imprint: Black Swan
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 432
  • RRP: $29.99
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About the author

Gavin Chait

Born in Cape Town in 1974, Gavin Chait emigrated to the UK nearly ten years ago. He has degrees in Microbiology & Biochemistry, and Electrical Engineering. He is an economic development strategist and data scientist, and has travelled extensively in Africa, Latin America, Europe and Asia and is now based in Oxford. His first novel, Lament for the Fallen, was critically acclaimed (Eric Brown in the Guardian called it ‘a compulsively readable, life affirming tale’). Our Memory Like Dust is his second.

portrait photo of Gavin Chait

Also by Gavin Chait

Our Memory Like Dust
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Praise for Lament for the Fallen

Loved the whole experience as Gavin brought solid world building into the mix alongside cracking pace as well as dialogue that just tripped off the page . . . a great read . . . Magic.

FALCATA TIMES

Out of this world engrossing. You don’t have to understand the science to believe in it . . . superb world building . . . aided by enchanting fables and philosophies weaved into the narrative, Lament for the Fallen is an often poetic, occasionally disturbing, and always enthralling tale that has all the thematic ingredients to make it one of the best sci-fi books of 2016.

CULTUREFLY

Lyrical prose and imaginative world-building . . . the book is gripping, powerful and frequently impressive . . . an ambitious and intelligent work that marks out Chait as a writer worthy of further attention.

Saxon Bullock, SFX magazine

Richly drawn . . . a smart, ideas-driven novel . . . a promising and ambitious debut.

SCiFiNOW

Highly readable . . . Chait should be applauded for managing that all important trick of getting you to keep turning that page until there aren't any left . . . smart, ideas-led science fiction with a literary fiction bent.

STARBURST magazine

Refreshingly different . . . exhilarating . . . a compulsively readable, life-affirming tale told in direct, lambent prose, and Chait does a masterful job of juxtaposing a traditional African setting with a convincing depiction of a far-future alien society.

Eric Brown, GUARDIAN

Astonishingly accomplished . . . the writing is very elegant, switching between scenes of shocking brutality and images of incredible beauty, but the thing that really sets this book apart from other sci-fi that I’ve read is its heart. A deep humanity animates the very core of the book . . . a beautifully constructed novel, interrogating the question of what makes us human and what makes us humane . . . do seek out this novel because I think you’ll be intrigued and pleasantly surprised even if you don’t normally read sci-fi.

IDLEWOMAN.NET