States of Man. This item is unavailable.States of Man

Tender, nostalgic, romantic, funny, absurd, magically real, speculative, ironic, nightmarish, entertaining and elegantly rendered...these stories span a century of Man's consciousness. Once, a man might be a Gatsby chasing his girl half-way around the world, the captain of a football World Cup winning side, a raging Picasso bull in a mythical maze refusing to yield lover or art till his last mortality-defiant egotistic gasp. Straightforward enough choices, dreams, behaviour. Suddenly he is man interrupted, underwhelmed, overworked, ridiculed, young, rock-solid or unreliable family man, father, husband, friend; his freedom evaporates: he's globe-trotting inbox-fatigued nonsense-hearing corporate, military civil-serving quiet ministry of Everyman. He's so exasperated he might just run away and prop up a bar, or contemplate mild treachery just to get by, and he's put-upon, as he zigzags across #TimesUp, political correctness, game theory, oh... and... the women in his life. Now here he stands staring down the barrel of the 21st Century - he's superman, he's transhuman, he's disassembling, he's nearly done for ...or is he?

Gareth Cadwallader's first novel, Watkins & Co. is published by Wet Zebra in 2016. His play, Cleopatra, has been performed at the Kings Head and Hope theatres in Islington. Madame Manet and Blood-Crossed have been performed at the Tabard in Chiswick. His story The Fall first features in the anthology If This Then That, published by WriteSideLeft. When off the field of combat, he works with entrepreneurs in London helping them grow their businesses.