My non-fiction novel, published by Odd Volumes

Printed in France, so they have a cool French feel to them. And now there is a new review in Sanglap 7.1 (November 2020) – by Swati Joshi – in this well-known Indian journal.

Consciousness (with Mutilation) is a non-fiction novel. Every sentence that begins any paragraph within it also serves as the concluding sentence of another paragraph. The trigger for the text is an epileptic seizure the author experienced in April 2018. This event prompted an investigation of the meaning of continuity in individuals, families and states. Could we have been somebody else yesterday, or become somebody else tomorrow? Consciousness annexes a Syrian novella – Mutilation – within its pages; a novella by Mamdouh Adwan, first published in Damascus in 1971. Reading this book is to be drawn into whirlpools. It is self-analysis, but, since the author’s lineage is both Jewish and Quaker, it evolves into an analysis of Zionism, of which Howell’s grandfather was a proponent, and of the role of the British in the Middle East. Having experienced sudden lapses of consciousness, the author senses that “life is not a river. Life is a collage.” This book takes The Naked Lunch by William Burroughs and Jealousy by Alain Robbe-Grillet for its literary forbears. In the way of ancient tragedy, the dilemma of the individual becomes the dilemma of the state, in this case Israel, and the author carries the reader into a world of smoke and mirrors, sustained by collage mediated through formal constraint.

Global Distribution: Baker & Taylor

ISBN 9-780- 9991365-3-9

Can be bought on ebay

Can be bought at Barnes and Noble

Can be bought at Amazon

“Anthony Howell is a man of many artistic talents but most importantly of all, for me, is the fact that he has an open mind which he uses to his, and our, great advantage … he is not afraid to ask all the questions that need to be asked and to join all the dots that need to be joined … at this time when we hear so many lies from our mainstream media news purveyors it is more important than ever to listen to what an independent and incisive thinker like Anthony has to tell us … he comes from a background that has given him some amazing insights and I feel privileged that he has shared them with me … now the rest of the world can learn more …”      Elleanne Green

*

Very pleased to be here on biblioklept.org

*

Just been sent an Amazon review by Giacomo Doris:

“Dazzling darkness

The seed is Howell’s seizure on a train, in 2018, from Kings Cross, London, to Leeds, change in Huddersfield, for a poetry reading. He never makes it to the end. The trip is far more circuitous. The passenger is the shattered river of consciousness, not the author’s individual identity, whatever that may mean. The seizure, suggests Howell, was an assassination attempt. Could be. We doubt it. The Russians? Pricked him between the fingers. The context would suggest Mossad. Howell’s ‘critique of Israel’ is not half an inch within ‘the goodly tent.’ He notes, ‘in due course, the oppressed become the oppressors,’ or, more bluntly, ‘one night a nation went to sleep as a democracy, and the next morning it woke as a fascist regime.’ But who is this Howell, author of this ‘non-fiction novel,’ an auto-biography full of ‘bio’ but — what ‘auto’? What self? This is precisely the question. Life is not a river, not a continuum, but a collage, he claims, flowing furiously. What not-river, I wonder. A pond? Yes, we do have a pond! In this ‘Consciousness (with Mutilation)’ we have Howell’s rendition of a novella, ‘Mutilated,’ by Mamdouh Adwan, first published in Damascus in 1971. Like a single drop of water in a secluded mountain pool, the serene, and tragic, linearity of the ‘mutilated’ narrator collides  head-on with the furious whirlwind of Howell’s fictively non-fiction experience: ‘when I wake up how do I know who I was when I went to sleep.’ A dark dazzle. Ten months after the end of the Six-Day Way in 1967 Idriss is the very last inhabitant (along with his cow) of the abandoned village of Mansura, on the Golan Heights, a few miles from Quneitra. He tells his tale, and the tale of his land. The Israelis plan to turn Mansura into a kibbutz, they try to coax Idriss out, he resists. In the end, the soldiers set the village on fire and shoot him: ‘Blood flows out of the wound, soaking the earth with its darkness.’  So much for ‘(with Mutilation).’ ‘Consciousness’: Who is this Howell, with his collage? His seizures. He even gets mugged! His losses of consciousness. His travels. His identity? Not a river, I’d say a huge raging waterfall, absolutely indomitable. We meet many members of his family. But, Rebecca, Becca, a Jew from Boston, toughened up in Israel, her true home, a soldier now, shooting the Palestinian ‘shits,’ she even shoots a Palestinian nurse in cold blood — who in the world is she? Did Howell really meet her on a dating site? Is she actually Yehuda, ‘born again’ after his sex-change operation? Who knows! This is chaos (with mutilation). Dazzling. Is Becca Howell’s fictive-sister, his alter-ego, his ‘not-me’? His antithesis. Everything he speaks out against. The part of the collage that Howell is not. Solid identity! Rebecca knows her own mind. ‘What’s ours is ours, just as the promise grants us. But that means imposing our identity.’ Exactly! Howell asks, What identity? What self? What mind?  Becca tells him. We listen.

Quneitra was captured by the Israelis on the last day of the Six-Day War. A thriving town of 20,000 people. Israel ‘returned’ the  town to Syria in 1974. Just before leaving the Israeli settlers and soldiers razed it to the ground. Destroyed it completely. Syria has refused to rebuilt it. Not a river. A site of memory. Consciousness (with Mutilation).”

*

And I just received this letter about Consciousness (with Mutilation) from Sylvia Mejri (with whom I taught in Brixton jail – where she ran the sound studio, some ten years ago)

“And so I have finally finished Consciousness. I had to read it in stages, because the opening 40 pages made me feel almost tearful and rocked by your mental vulnerability – the speed with which all can unravel and the markers and crossroads of our lives shift, blur and crumble. But I have always assumed that identity reveals itself according to circumstances and cannot be trapped, so the question you posed interested me. And I feel exonerated by the collage and condemned by alternatives. The Steele/Skripal material and your perception of being a target works very well and I loved the spiral format, the echoes and ever tighter circles you used. At times there was a hint of TS Eliot to the prose, particularly in the first half… And that brings me to your horrifying portrait of Rebecca and Zionist Israel, the reason I found the book so hard to go back to and deeply disturbing, since part of me – the part that picked up dead goslings and their mothers this month, cheerfully killed with ball bearings and slingshots by drunks who revelled in their precision- knows this is an alternative paradigm to mine. I remember the six day war, like you, drank coffee and munched gherkins the length and breadth of Syria – no kilims for me, I preferred tea towels with Assad senior’s face – and surveyed the Golan heights and sighed. It is not enough to state that all empires eventually fall, I think, and Zionist Israel will be a memory. As the novella points out so poignantly, oppression has victims and oppressors can be casual in their destructiveness and loathing of obstacles. Idriss is every man. So yes, Anthony, it is superb, brave and important. I shall read it again. Love, Sylvia”

*

All this kicked off back on Wed 24 April, 2019, when we had a brilliant launch at Housmans Radical Bookshop

Contact the author for more information, requests for interviews, review copies etc.

howell.anthony1@googlemail.com  0208 801 8577

http://www.anthonyhowell.org/