Bøker av Jan Fortune

Summer Solstice 2065.16 years after a devastating pandemic and societal collapse.Viola sets off into the forest to prepare for the gathering of her community, who bring their ghosts and fears, hopes and secrets, knowing that a single day can change everything.And theirs are not the only voices. The forest also has stories of grief and resurrection, trauma and forgiveness.Linguistically-inventive and deeply moving, this richly layered narrative asks what we mean by consciousness or a life well-lived, human or non-human.Beyond the end of the world, where is life to be found?"In her visually-inventive novel, Jan Fortune not only inhabits the minds of a community of engaging characters who are navigating a fragile future but also proves herself fluent in the language of birch and oak, to be acutely attuned to the song of moss and clover. ...a vital work that grapples with such momentous themes as individual and collective trauma, yet celebrates love, resilience and the intimate, reciprocal relationship between the human and more than human."- Susan Richardson, author of Words the Turtle Taught Me and Where the Seals Sing"Deeply rooted and grounded in a loving respect for our living earth and her healing medicines, this heartfelt story weaves magical rhythmic wordspells in a web of vibrant prose. A superb and nurturing work of love, hope and reconnection."- Uma Dinsmore-Tuli, author of Yoni Shakti and Yoga Nidra Made Easy"Jan's newest work invites you into an embodied journey through the colors of grief while reconnecting to the natural world. Reading this book is a healing act in its own right.''- Yoli Maya Yeh, Therapist, Educator & Activist"An intriguing exploration of our human connection to the earth and to each other... bleakly prophetic, the novel holds out the possibility of redemption... A book to savour for its wise heart."- Catherine Coldstream, author of Cloistered: My Years as a Nun

Saoirse grows up hearing the extraordinary stories of family members who died before her birth or in early childhood. Her aunt Miriam, who believed she had lived across a thousand years to be with her lover in each generation, the Moorish Princess Casilda. Her grandmother, Daireann. more than a healer and wise woman, and her father, Oisin, an alchemist and magician. But who is Saoirse? I was Casilda's mother more than a thousand years ago, she tells her mother, Sarah.Tucked away under a mountain in Roscommon in Oisin's family home, Saoirse meets Faolan, a local boy lost in their garden maze. As they play out stories from myth, Faolan's loyalty and love grows, but Saoirse craves adventure and is not easily won. As their paths diverge, one momentous event threatens everything, leading Saoirse into a maze from which she might never emerge and taking Faolan on a quest on which their lives depend.Spanning back into the mists of pre-history; travelling from Roscommon to Paris, Prague to Brittany, Budapest to Nice, Zaragoza to Tromso, and bringing together Celtic mythology from Ireland and Brittany, Saoirse's Crossing asks questions of identity as contemporary as they are ancient, exploring the lengths we will go to for love.

How do we come home in a strange land? Moving to a remote forest hamlet in a new country in the midst of a pandemic, the only way to connect is to take the time to linger, listen and observe-to be with the land that is becoming home. From this observations a series of haiku arise, following the Japanese system of 24 seasons divided into 72 micro-seasons and interspersed with eight lyric poems that travel around the Celtic wheel of the year. And so a forest garden and its surrounding Finistère woodland slowly reveals itself, weaving together the lunar and solar, melding the Celtic shape of the year with the increments of the Japanese solar terms, each one unveiling a new aspect of change. Charting a life unmoored from the familiar, but permeable to the new the poems find their place at 'the end of the world', as the Romans called Finistère, but also in Penn-ar-Bed, the Breton name which is both the end and start of the world. Most endings are also beginnings and here in these precise, exquisitely observed poems, we find ourselves both unsettled and settling, exploring what it means to hold together being adrift and belonging; cycles and transformation and how we find a beginning at the end of the world.

Two years after the events of The Standing Ground, the tiny outpost of Y Tir in North Wales becomes a refuge for those who want to live without implants-permanent links to government surveillance that are threatening to dominate people's lives again. But can Alys, Luke and Emrys thwart the growing threats of the new tech-giants whose offers of enhanced memories and virtual lives mask the erosion of privacy and even humanity? As new enemies threaten Y Tir's existence, and old enemies emerge to sew seeds of destruction, Alys' and Luke's lives are put under increasing pressure. But there are also allies, not least Alys' and Luke's daughter, Iris, who appears to have fallen out of the mists of Greek legend and into Celtic myth. Can Iris, more strange and powerful even than Myrddin Emrys, also known as Merlin, save the day for Y Tir?

In a near-future world without privacy or freedom, life is unravelling for Luke, a teenager whose questions and individuality have no place in surveilled society. A virtual encounter with a girl who claims to live beyond the all-controlling grip of E-Government sets him on a quest not only for answers, but for escape. But is Alys real? Why are there echoes of her world in his father, Nazir Malik¿s home, especially since Nazir is a celebrity artist trusted by E-Government? And what role can characters from Celtic Arthurian legend possibly play in saving the future? Most urgently, can Luke overcome the threats that surround him and find the Standing Ground?"A wonderful novel¿ a fresh rendition of the future that draws on technologies that are currently emerging¿ and on Arthurian legend¿ akin to Philip Pullman¿s street-smart, other-worldly creations, complete with convincing, humorous and likeable characters¿ a gripping read."Anna Kiernan

In this prequel to The Standing Ground, we travel back two generations to the origins of the oppressive E-Government state that infiltrates every aspect of people¿s lives in the decade following Brexit and a global pandemic. But, as the darkness overtakes Britain and other areas of Europe, the light of resistance wakes in a community that spans the Celtic outposts of Brittany and North Wales. And in a strange child, Myrddin Emrys, also known as Merlin.Weaving together Arthurian legend and exploratory fiction of the near future, The Roots of the Ground explores the human cost of a monoculture that tramples freedom and privacy and asserts with Carl Jung that:'As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.'