Endland Stories : Or Bad Lives

by Tim Etchells

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction

192 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1998

About the author

Tim Etchells is an English artist, writer, and educator whose work spans performance, fiction, visual art, installation, and critical writing. He is best known as the artistic director of Forced Entertainment, an experimental performance company he helped found in 1984. His practice explores language, presence, repetition, and the dynamics between audience and performer, often blurring boundaries between theatre, literature, and conceptual art. Etchells has published fiction including Endland Stories, The Dream Dictionary for the Modern Dreamer, and The Broken World, and has written widely on contemporary performance for publications and institutions. As a visual artist, he has created text-based installations, video pieces, and large-scale public artworks. He has taught internationally and holds a professorship in Performance and Writing at Lancaster University. Etchells has also collaborated with numerous artists and makers across disciplines, developing works for theatres, galleries, and public spaces. Recognized for his innovation and influence, he has received major awards and residencies and continues to shape contemporary performance and interdisciplinary artistic practice.

Reviews

[Tom Mooney]

Funny, scathing and absolutely nuts.

[James Williams]

There are very few books I can honestly say are utterly original and unlike anything else out there but this is definitely one of them. It’s set in an alternative England (the ‘Endland’ of the title) which is both inhabited by gods and mortals whilst also being recognizable as modern Britain. Pound shops and takeaways exist alongside deities with names like Herpes, Porridge and Spatula. It’s a kind of surrealist, cartoony take on modern Britain, with a literary and typographical style all its own, with the text liberally littered with comic and seemingly irrelevant asides. One of the settings is DAVE’S TOPLESS CHIP SHOP (!).

This may have come out twenty years ago on a small press but it’s still refreshing to see there will always be writers with a personal, original vision who simply write what they have to rather than just jumping on another bandwagon in order to make a quick buck. It also feels refreshingly un-edited; whilst many books these days feel like they’ve had their edges and originality all but removed by a small army of editors, this feels like it’s the author’s vision in its original form. Even the typewriter-style font makes it somehow seem more real and direct than so many more polished books. So if, like me, you're bored of corporate publishing and all the identikit books it churns out, read this. You won't be disappointed!

[David]

A brilliant, maverick, hilarious and distressing vision of British society which reflect the warped values, emotional indulgences and cultural disintegration of this era. These short stories are unique and compelling, and the one or two damp squibs are more than compensated for by the bravura quality of the majority.

Contains sex, violence and gods named after suprmarkets.