MURMURATIONS
Uncanny stories about birds
Nicholas Royle (editor)
Freud observed that birds ‘don’t seem to be submitted to the same laws of gravity as us’, although without gravity they would die, as they need it to swallow. Birds are all around us; they could not be more familiar. And yet at the same time they are alien, unheimlich – uncanny.
Award-winning editor Nicholas Royle brings together previously published stories by Daphne du Maurier, Anna Kavan, Russell Hoban and others with brand-new tales by contemporary writers including Bill Broady, Adam Marek, Regi Claire and many more.
With a foreword by Angelica Michelis, senior lecturer in English at Manchester Metropolitan University.
Contributors’ royalties and editor’s fee to be donated to the RSPB.Praise for Murmurations
'These tales exude a striking weirdness and a sense of wonderment ... Exploring "the way in which birds inhabit the border between the mundane and the extraordinary", these stories provide a startling glimpse into a world of otherness capable, at times, of eerily mirroring our own.'
The Guardian
Featured on the BBC Radio 4 'Today' programme.
About Nicholas Royle
Nicholas Royle is the author of a short story collection, two novellas and five novels. He has edited fourteen previous anthologies including the British Fantasy Award-winning Darklands, the bestselling A Book of Two Halves, The Time Out Book of Paris Short Stories and The Best British Short Stories 2011. A senior lecturer in creative writing at Manchester Metropolitan University, he also runs Nightjar Press, publishing original short stories as signed, limited-edition chapbooks. He has been a keen birdwatcher since childhood.
'Some pairings can be relied upon – literature and life, Steptoe and Son, Lennon and McCartney, Nicholas Royle and a good anthology'
—Andrew O’Hagan
Contents
Swallows Sleep in Winter – Adam Marek
For the True Anatomy – Claire Massey
Sliding off the World – Bruce Gilbert
The Gannets – Anna Kavan
Fight or Flight – Emma Jane Unsworth
Birds of Prey – Joel Lane
The Egg – Alison Moore
The Raven – Russell Hoban
The Rhododendron Canopy – Elizabeth Stott
Huginn and Muninn – Tom Fletcher
When the Red, Red Robin – Regi Claire
A Nestling – Jack Trevor Story
Barren Clough – Neil Campbell
Shrike – David Rose
The Candling – Deborah Kermode
A Revelation of Cormorants – Mark Valentine
The Brids – Bill Broady
Rarely Visits Gardens – Juliet West
All Our Dead Heavens – Conrad Williams
Tsipporah – Adèle Geras
Dead Bird – Socrates Adams-Florou
The Beautiful Room – RB Russell
Gulls – Nicholas Royle
Snow – Marc Werner
Flight of Fancy – GA Pickin
The Wounded Bird – Michael Kelly
Corbeaux Bay – Geeta Roopnarine
Husks – Stephen Bacon
Painful Hard Ectoplasm – Laura Ellen Joyce
The Birds – Daphne du Maurier
