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On the Heroism of Mortals: 11
Author(s): Allan Cameron (Author)
- Publisher: Vagabond Voices
- Publication Date: 13 July 2012
- Edition: First Edition
- Language: English
- Print length: 192 pages
- ISBN-10: 1908251085
- ISBN-13: 9781908251084
Book Description
This is a collection of eleven short stories whose common theme is the heroism of our flawed lives. It explores the arduousness of people’s lives and covers such diverse subjects as human solidarity, generational change, single parenthood, domestic violence, the tragic complexity of revolution, police brutality, artistic hubris, and the limitations of rationalism. In “The Hat”, a polish Jew on the run in Eastern Europe goes down to a town in search for food and, noticing the large number of German soldiers on patrol, hides himself in a funeral procession. But he stands out as the only mourner without a hat. As he walks along, another man places his hat on the fugitive’s head: an example of man’s humanity to man. In “Living with the Polish Count”, the young Soviet Republic struggles to keep foreign and reactionary forces at bay and in so doing loses the morality that initially inspired them. In “The Selfish Geneticist”, lunch in a smart restaurant exposes the rift between two academics, both dogmatic and contemptuous of others, but one more strictly rational and the other more influenced by his human emotions.
Editorial Reviews
Review
‘Perhaps human acts are never pure, and always the product of varied and sometimes contradictory impulses,’ muses a political commissar in the Red Army as the consequences and, yes, contradictions of revolution unfold around him. In this collection of short stories, Allan Cameron focuses on the clash of ideas and perspectives, from the domestic to the world-changing. … Sometimes the views are so extreme that they are held by a minority of one, like the man who poses as a statue in Glasgow city centre but, far from being a simple street performer, believes he’s the harbinger of a new age. We could more or less agree he’s insane, but what about the narrator of the opening story, who presents himself as the author of the book we’re about to read? He’s an outsider, but mad? Where do we draw the line between mere difference of opinion and complete detachment from reality? On the Heroism of Mortals is buzzing with questions like these, a stimulating, restlessly intelligent collection. –The Herald
About the Author
Allan Cameron was born in 1952 and grew up in Nigeria and Bangladesh. He has written two novels, The Golden Menagerie (Luath Press, 2004), partly based on Apuleius’ The Golden Ass but also a polemic against it, and The Berlusconi Bonus, a political satire principally directed at Western consumerism, the policies of Bush and Blair, and Fukuyama’s now disowned victory song of American capitalism. His non-fiction work, In Praise of the Garrulous, is an examination of the essentiality of language to human nature. The first of two collection of short stories, Can the Gods Cry?, was published in 2011, and this volume is its companion. He does not speak the truth to power, as power never listens or only listens to other power, but he does continue to write the truth about power, as he sees it, and to demonstrate his admiration for the powerless and their prodigious resilience.
