Agents of Oblivion

Agents of Oblivion by Iain Sinclair. Dublin: Swan River Press, 2023. Hardback edition limited to 550 copies out of which the first 100 were embossed and hand-numbered. This is number 20, embossed and hand-numbered to title page. Signed by both author Iain Sinclair and illustrator Dave McKean. Now out of print as a hardback. Rare to find one of the first 100.

Specifications

Cover art and interior illustrations by Dave McKean; jacket production by Meggan Kehrli; edited by Brian J. Showers and Timothy J. Jarvis; copyedited by Jim Rockhill; typeset by Steve J. Shaw; published by Swan River Press at Æon House. Published on 3 May 2023; signed by Iain Sinclair and Dave McKean; 191 pages; lithographically printed on 90 gsm paper; dust jacketed; illustrated Wibalin boards; sewn binding; head- and tail-bands; ISBN: 978-1-78380-044-5.

As the present copy is number 20, the book is embossed and hand-numbered to title page.

Condition

A fine copy in like dust wrapper, now placed in an archival sleeve.

About Agents of Oblivion (from the Swan River Press website)

“Generally speaking the dead do not return,” pronounced Antonin Artaud. But the dead are permitted to visit those who welcome them. Their spectral, machine-made voices echo in deep tunnels under London. Voices without hosts. Without agency. They make their oracular pronouncements even when nobody is listening on the vast empty platforms of the Elizabeth Line. They have their codes and their secret meanings.Four stories starting everywhere and finishing in madness. Four acknowledged guides. Four tricksters. Four inspirations. Algernon Blackwood. Arthur Machen. J. G. Ballard. H. P. Lovecraft. They are known as “Agents of Oblivion”. And sometimes, in brighter light, as oblivious angels... .As host, as oracle, Iain Sinclair moves through this quartet of tales, through a spectral London that once was, or might never have been.

About the author Iain Sinclair (from the Swan River Press website)

Iain Sinclair has lived in Hackney since 1968, working at a variously titled London project.  He has published widely through mainstream and independent presses. These crimes have been comprehensively collected in a three-volume bibliography/biography by Jeff Johnson. Now published by Test Centre Books. An early prose-poetry trilogy was followed by the novels Downriver and Radon Daughters. The short-story collection, Slow Chocolate Autopsy, was a first collaboration with Dave McKean. Sinclair was formerly a used-book dealer and never quite got over it.