The Year of Open Doors Paperback
Paperback £9.99 + P&P
£9.99
With a new foreword by Irvine Welsh.
Exclusive artwork by Aidan Moffat.
Released 27th July 2011
In one of the most ambitious collections of recent years, Somerset Maugham Prizewinner Rodge Glass edits an exciting assembly of Scotland’s most promising new writers. Writing on contemporary Scotland, The Year of Open Doors features stories from Saltire First Book award shortlisted Sophie Cooke, James Black Tait Memorial Prize nominee Suhayl Saadi, acclaimed novelist and poet Kevin MacNeil and renowned performer and novelist Alan Bissett. Throw in renowned international authors like Kapka Kassabova and Jason Donald and renowned figures of Scottish literature like Duncan McClean and you have a collection that aims to show a changing and dynamic new Scotland. Cargo Publishing has also opened the door to brand new, unpublished authors; quite simply if you want to read the best new talent in Scottish fiction, you’ve come to the right place. Every copy of The Year of Open Doors now comes with a free audio sampler CD produced by Cargo and Chemikal Underground Records (while stocks last.)
Our new ebook versions of the book come in PDF and EPUB. They include the foreword by Irvine Welsh and exclusive photographs from The Year of Open Doors tour. Compatible with most ereaders, iPad and iPhone.
“A very important book…a genuine breakout collection.”-Irvine Welsh
“Everything that is brilliant about Scotland and new writing.”-The Skinny
“Cargo Publishing has taken a risk here….[it] has paid off in spades. Deserves to be read. And recommended.”-The Scotsman
“Immaculate collection…a mission to revive Scotland’s independent literary tradition.”- The List
“The most Scottish book of the year…a book to admire.”- The Independent
“Buy two and give one to someone you care about…a superb collection, unbelievably important.”-Indelible Ink
“Glass’s introduction gives a super overview of the anthology as a whole and the genesis and design of the project; Orange Prize nominee Sophie Cooke’s cynical depiction of corporate “democracy” (“United Solutions”) is quite superb, and Aidan Moffat’s well-observed confession by a prurient young man who undertakes a phone-based vendetta against the local neds and who feels the need to let the local police know what he’s done (“The Boy Donaldson”) is both a lot of fun and a lot of sinister. “-The Music Slut
“The stand-out story is by Kapka Kassabova. The Hostel In Junction Street concerns an Australian ex-soldier and a Polish-American artist, lovers who move to Edinburgh. He gets a job as a manager and handyman at the hostel opposite their flat. It’s at this point the story unexpectedly becomes eerie, the couple’s disturbed relationship mirrored by weird atmospherics. There’s no night creeper jumping out of a closet. No screeching violins. Just doors that refuse to open, objects that go missing, all foreshadowing the true mystery-the human heart. Alan Bissett’s Celebrity Gossip is likeable too. A gossip columnist returns to his old high school to give a speech. He trades on tabloid outrage for a living, but when he discovers a true scandal, a slipshod school extension built using private-public partnership money, few are interested, including the columnist. Kevin MacNeil’s A Snake Drinks Water And Makes Poison, A Cow Drinks Water And Makes Milk is set on a tourist beach about to suffer the lethal lash of the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami. MacNeil builds a sense of portent as holidaymakers clown around, unaware of their fate.” -The Herald
“There are two stand-out contributions, those of Duncan McLean and Kevin MacNeil. McLean’s brand of anarchic comedy and exasperated pathos is in fine form in Here Wouldn’t Be There, a story which manages to use the word “jitteryer” as if it wasn’t newly formed. MacNeil’s A Snake Drinks Water And Makes Poison, A Cow Drinks Water And Makes Milk is set against the 2004 tsunami, and manages to balance a striking sense of actually witnessing the events with a feeling of reflective distance. The sentences expand and contract in imitation of the sea’s retreat and apocalyptic resurgence; and MacNeil weaves in reflections about the supernatural and the divine in a purely human manner. Daibhidh Martin, whose piece shows real talent, a willingness to be askance and a poetic sensibility.” -Scotland On Sunday
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UK: P&P £2.20
Europe: P&P £4.50
Rest of World & USA: P&P £7.90
