Tracing life from a childhood in an Italian-English family on Tyneside to becoming a Welsh-speaking freelance writer in Cardiff, Eisteddfod-winning author Tony Bianchi leads the reader through a series of increasingly bizarre vignettes. Each section is a free-standing short story but read together they form a ludic, untrustworthy autobiography where the rug of humdrum normality is constantly pulled from under our feet. Lured into trusting belief by the narrator's direct, confiding tone, by the sometimes overwhelming weight of circumstantial geographical and historical detail, and by the photos and documents that seem to guarantee authenticity, again and again the reader is suddenly left rudderless, unsure of the boundaries between truth and fiction. Did Bianchi ever play football in a Cardiff park with notorious Serbian war-lord Arkan? Is the floor of his local pub a concrete realisation of an M.C. Escher painting?

In England, Wales, and beyond, Bianchi introduces a series of extraordinary characters, from the devout, indulgence-collecting, organ-playing grandfather, to the plumber and Cumbrian nationalist Caedmon, or the piano-playing pharmacist with carpal tunnel syndrome. And whether at the centre of the narrative or reporting from the sidelines, there, constantly leading us on from one potentially disastrous situation to another, is the author as anti-hero, always earnestly self-deprecating, always reinventing himself, always challenging our assumptions about identity, time and memory.

About the Author
Tony Bianchi came from Tyneside and lived in Wales for many years, most recently in Cardiff. Most of his fiction was written in Welsh. Pryfeta (Y Lolfa, 2007) won the Daniel Owen Memorial Prize and Dwy Farwolaeth Endaf Rowlands (Gomer 2015) the Nationa Eisteddfod Prose Medal. His other novels are Esgyrn Bach (Y Lolfa, 2006), Chwilio am Sebastian Pierce (Gomer, 2009), Ras Olaf Harri Selwyn (Gomer, 2012), Sol a Lara (Gomer 2016) and, in English, Bumping (Alcemi, 2010), Daniel's Beetles (Seren 2011) and Harry Selwyn's Last Race (Parthian, 2015). He has also published a volume of short stories, Cyffesion Geordie Oddi Cartref (Gomer, 2010), which was long-listed for Wales Book of the Year. Several of these stories were translated especially for this collection. Tony died, aged 65, in July 2016, whilst Staring Back at Me was being edited. He leaves an enormous gap in the literature of Wales, for which he worked tirelessly, with the enthusiasm and delight he brought to every aspect of his life.


Book Information
ISBN 9781788640107
Author Tony Bianchi
Format Paperback
Page Count 182
Imprint Cinnamon Press
Publisher Cinnamon Press