They (Faber Editions) (Paperback)

Introduced by Carmen Maria Machado, the radical dystopian classic, lost for forty years: in a nightmarish through-a-glass-darkly Britain, they are coming closer . 'I remembered how they began, a parody for the newspapers. No one wrote about them now.'

Life on the windswept Sussex coast goes on as it has for centuries. But this is England through-a-glass-darkly. They are coming closer. It begins with a dead dog, shadowy footsteps, confiscated books. The National Gallery is cleared; motorway checkpoints demarcate Areas; the Art Centres are raided. The surviving writers, artists, and thinkers become cultural refugees, preserving their crafts, creating, loving, and remembering. But as subversives are gleaned by military surveys, cured of identity, desensitised in retreats, they make it easier to forget...

Lost for over forty years, Kay Dick's They is an electrifying literary artefact. As enigmatic as a nightmare, it is a cry from the soul against censorship and conformity, a radical celebration of queerness and self-expression - and a warning.