The Architecture of Fear

<p><b>'Brilliant, inventive and marvellously written' ALBERTO MANGUEL<br><br><i>A world without walls, without curtains, is not believable.<br>Because there is no world without fears.<br>Walls, curtains, are the architecture of fear.<br>And the fear is us.</i></b><br><br>At the heart of a forest there is a city surrounded by walls.<br><br>Inside, the people are haunted by the memory of The Great Disaster that eliminated two thirds of their population.<br><br>A dictatorial regime insists that order and discipline will protect the people from the threats of nature, but when a soldier is found mutilated outside the city walls on a winter's night, a new order takes root silently in the minds of the oppressed.<br><br>One by one, they gather to listen to the voice of a man claiming to possess the gift of knowing what is to come. The man known as The Messenger.<br><br><b>An unsettling, powerful and strikingly-written dystopian fable about revolution, power and oppression - for readers of Agustina Bazterrica, Margaret Atwood, and <i>I Who Have Never Known Men</i>.</b><br><br>Ángel Gurría-Quintana is a historian, journalist and literary translator from Spanish and Portuguese. He writes regularly for the books pages of the <i>Financial Times</i>. His translations include <i>Other Carnivals: Short Stories from Brazil</i> (Full Circle Editions, 2013) and <i>The Return</i>, by Dulce Maria Cardoso (Maclehose Press, 2016).</p>