Underground - Softcover

Hill, Tobias

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0571201091 ISBN 13: 9780571201099

Publisher: Faber and Faber, 1999

Synopsis

A literary thriller in which, in a sense, the London Underground becomes the central character. Someone is pushing women under trains, and a Polish immigrant who works at a north London station - a loner with a complicated past and a secret fear of the dark - is determined to stop the killings.

About this title

Review:

Already lauded for his vivid collections of poetry and short stories, Tobias Hill makes the move to full-length novel with Underground and instantly establishes himself as one of Britain's most exciting young novelists. London Underground worker Casimir is jolted out of his somnambulant routine when he realises, from the evidence on his monitor, that a young woman's supposed accident or suicide attempt is in fact attempted murder. At the same time he becomes particularly obsessed by fleeting glimpses of Walkmaned tube dweller Alice, whose otherworldly beauty haunts the tunnels. Like Neil Bartlett, Hill uses London's hidden history to explore London's hidden present and like Bartlett he does it through the eyes of an outsider. The story unfolds in counterpoint to the childlike telling of Casimir's troubled childhood in Poland, his own underground life, with which he's slowly forced to come to terms. Hill may stuff his book with tubespotter detail about London's fascinating subterranean network--its hidden passages, makeshift dwellings, locked and forgotten stations--but, far from being just another feelgood novel for city commuters and Time Out addicts, Underground is a rich, multi-layered novel that reaches far beyond the end of the Northern line. --Alan Stewart

About the Author:

Tobias Hill was born in London. In 2003 the TLS nominated him as one the best young writers in Britain: in 2004 he was selected as one of the country's Next Generation poets and shortlisted for the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year. His collection of stories, Skin, won the Pen-Macmillan Prize for Fiction and was shortlisted for the John Llewellyn Rhys/Mail on Sunday Prize. The Cryptographer, his third novel, led AS Byatt to observe that 'Hill is one of the two or three most original and interesting young novelists working in Britain today.' His fourth novel, The Hidden, was published in 2009 to great critical acclaim.

About this edition

• Publisher: Faber and Faber
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0571201091
• ISBN 13: 9780571201099
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256