O brave new world, that has such people in’t. Once upon a time not very far from now, two children come home to find a line of wet red paint encircling the outside of their house. What does it mean?It’s a truism of our time that it’ll be the next generation who’ll sort out our increasingly toxic world.

What would that actually be like?In a state turned hostile, a world of insiders and outsiders, what things of the past can sustain them and what shape can resistance take?And what’s a horse got to do with any of this?Gliff is a novel about how we make meaning and how we are made meaningless. With a nod to the traditions of dystopian fiction, a glance at the Kafkaesque, and a new take on the notion of classic, it’s a moving and electrifying read, a vital and prescient tale of the versatility and variety deep-rooted in language, in nature and in human nature

The first of two novels, Gliff, which is a Scottish/northern word for a shock, a fright, a transient moment, a glance or sudden glimpse, will be followed by a second novel in 2025, called Glyph (a signifying mark – as in ‘hieroglyph’). Glyph, the second novel, will tell a story which is hidden in the first so the two books will belong together but can be read independently.