New Title: In Search of Sixpence

A Friction Fiction imprint

You don't have to be an anarchist art historian to believe in the redemptive power of art. But in his new novel, In Search of Sixpence, Michael Paraskos tests that theory almost to anarchistic destruction.

In Search of Sixpence was begun by Paraskos in 2014 whilst he sat at the hospital bedside of his dying father, the celebrated Cypriot artist Stass Paraskos. As Paraskos admits, a kind of madness and despair at this situation soon led him to become a character in his own novel, along with his father and people from his past. At first this was a kind of escapism from the horror of reality, but as the novel progressed it became a kind of horror in itself.

Increasingly overwhelmed by feelings of anger, guilt and loss, Paraskos found he had written and his father into a terrifying alternative reality in which the boundaries between fact and fiction had broken down.

In this fictional universe, where even time seems unstable, Paraskos finds himself being treated by a psychoanalyst called Mariella Frostrup. He encounters the horrific figure of Ezzy Pound, possibly a BBC executive or possibly a murderous Nazi-sympathiser, determined to get his hands of Stass's diary. There too he finds the protean but beautiful femme fatale Miss Waites, and a Chandleresque companion, Geroud.

As art and life collide in this moving, often angry, and also funny book, the question remains whether art can ever really act as a cure for pain. In the novel, as fact and fiction merge, we experience the raw pain of the loss of a close parent, and the fantasy world that is created by a wounded mind as it tries desperately to avoid facing the reality of that loss.

Dr Michael Paraskos is an art historian who teaches at the City and Guilds of London Art School. He is the author of many books and articles on art and art history, and is most well known for his work on the relationship between art and anarchism. He has reviewed exhibitions and books for BBC Radio 4?s Front Row and The Spectator magazine. He lives in West Norwood, in south London.

Title: In Search of Sixpence

ISBN: 9780992924782

RRP (UK): £15.99