Cloudless

SHORTLISTED FOR THE AUTHORS' CLUB BEST FIRST NOVEL AWARD 'Beautiful and unflinching, Cloudless is a phenomenal debut' ANNA HOPE, author of Albion 'Attends to the bonds we have to family, landscape, global politics with uncommon attention, extraordinary depth and lightness of touch' ELIZABETH O'CONNOR, author of Whale Fall It is autumn 2004 and in a farmhouse on the hills outside Llandudno, Catrin and John endure the agonizing wait for their older son to return from Iraq. His decision to join up has left them reeling, yet there are other battles at home: the working of the land that has been theirs for generations and what to do with their troubled younger son. Catrin's childhood sweetheart comes back to their small town, forcing the boys' doting mother to confront the life she might have had. And John, desperate to keep farm and family together, turns to ever riskier methods to stay afloat. As each member of the family grasps at their own tenuous lifeline, they drift further from one another - until, on a cold winter evening, there is a fateful knock at the door. Written in luminous, exquisitely calibrated prose, Cloudless is a masterful portrayal of the fragility and resilience of human connection. 'Dastur writes with devastating compassion on what it means to be human' CATHERINE AIREY, author of Confessions 'Elegant and quietly devastating' MELISSA FU, author of Peach, Blossom, Spring 'A story about love and war, family and nation . . . Told with intelligence, sensitivity and a huge heart' PAUL McVEIGH, author of The Good Son

Rupert Dastur is a writer, editor and publisher. His writing has been shortlisted for the Bath Short Story Award and the Fish Short Story Prize, and won the Federation of Scottish Writers Award in 2018. He is the founder of TSS Publishing and director of The Cambridge Prizes for Short Fiction, and he runs writing workshops across the UK and abroad. He read English at Cambridge University and lives in London. Cloudless is his debut novel.