Our Struggle
Wayne Holloway
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From the publisher
“A barnstorming epic of the 80's British left.” – Hari Kunzru
“A panoramic, radical tale. Complex, powerfully imagined and compelling storytelling. Both funny and devastating.” – Wendy Erskine
“Trojan horse of a novel. The conversational, high-energy prose causes one to open the gates and then all hell breaks loose. This is a smart work that offers no easy answers. It offers no easy questions, for that matter.” – Percival Everett
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, Jaques 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?
“A journey into the glories, costs and disappointments of our idealism, as told through the moving story of a union man radicalised in the 1980s, his family, and those who knew him. Our Struggle is an ambitious novel depicting the endless fractures brought about by politics, war, money, drugs, and critical theory. A spirited read that has much to say about the hypocrisies and conflicts of our time.” – James Clarke, author of The Litten Path