Our Struggle

'A barnstorming epic of the '80s British Left' Hari Kunzru, author of Red Pill Paul, ex-tube driver and drinking partner of legendary Union leader Bob Crowe turns up at Essex University in the early 1980s haunted by the death of his colleague on the tracks. Thrown into the radical mix of Student Union life and the academic intoxication of post-modern theory taught by the likes of Ernesto Laclau, Jacques Derrida and a very young Slavoj Zizek, Paul befriends the novel's unnamed narrator. What follows is a riotous attempt to put the 20th Century to bed, as seen through the eyes of the foot soldiers of British history. From Miners strikes to IRA collection buckets, ANC demonstrations and some very dodgy handling of Soviet money, Our Struggle climaxes with a devastating denouement in modern day Kurdistan. Holloway's epic tale asks the big questions, does what we think, what we say and what we do ever match up? Or are we destined to fall short of the ideals we think we cherish?

Wayne Holloway is a novelist and film maker from London. He is the author of the novel Bindlestiff (Influx 2019) and the collection Land of Hunger (Zero 2016).