Jane Gaskell – författare

The public execution of Ringo Starr is the first demonstration of power by the aliens whose spacecraft hangs over Britain and seals off the country from the outside world. It’s the 1960s and, while the aliens linger overhead, London’s streets have become a feral playground for warring factions of fascists and communists. The odious teenage Rat runs a rooming house that is also a brothel and a crash pad for a volatile gang of neo-fascist thugs known as The Lot. But the house’s fragile equilibrium implodes with the arrival of his cousin, Frijja. Delicate, but radiating icy detachment, she systematically dismantles the gang’s primitive power dynamics. Her presence ignites a dangerous, obsessive fixation in Connor, The Lot’s most ruthless enforcer. When rising violence forces them to flee their home in a stolen helicopter, the three embark on a desperate trek across a decaying England and the strange new communities that have sprung up amongst the wreckage. As the trio fight to survive and for dominance between themselves, their uneasy alliance unravels toward a shocking, haunting conclusion. Bitingly, darkly funny, satirical A Sweet, Sweet Summer is one of the great lost classics of postwar British fiction, now available to readers again for the first time in many decades.