My thanks to Ania Vesenny, or rather her Romanian brother-in-law, for translating some of the Romanian publisher's blurb about me:
“Born in 1960, R.N. Morris is the author of two succesfull novels, with a different theme and different in style – the very modern and extremely appreciated Taking Comfort (2006), about a character who ends up involved in a chain of bizzare, kafkaesque, events, and the mistery historical novel “A Gentle Axe”… which re-creates on its own the landscape and the athmosphere of Dostoievsky’s books and even borrows a character from “Crime and Punishment”. R.N. Morris wrote also short stories published in various antologies. He lives in London with his wife and two children. “A ‘thriller’ dark and impactful, whose lieterary parents are Dostoievsly and Gogol.” (The Independent).
I'm really intrigued, and gratified, that they have mentioned Taking Comfort in such detail. And that they have used the adjective 'kafkaesque' to describe it. I have always wanted to be described as Kafkaesque. Or Dostoevskyan. Anyhow, publishers only ever say positive things about their own authors, I know that - but they are nothing to do with Taking Comfort and I didn't even know they knew of its existence. Nobody at Faber will have told them about it, because Taking Comfort was published by Macmillan New Writing.
What's also interesting is to compare that translated quote from the Independent with what the Independent actually said. I think that is taken from the headline to Virginia Rounding's review, which was: "Dostoevsky meets Gogol in a seamy, St Petersburg murder mystery"
The Romanian publisher, like the Polish, have also been very taken with a quote from Stephen Lewis in the York Press ("A worthy sequel to one of the greatest novels ever written: and a cracking thriller in its own right"). The only problem is that they have both ascribed it to a publication called The New York Press, which doesn't actually exist.
Hey, old York came before New York. The original and best, if you ask me.
