❉ Much anticipated, hardback re-issue of Nigel Kneale’s award-winning collection, with an introduction from Mark Gatiss.
‘Nigel Kneale was a writer of foresight, character, terror, and wonder … his best work is as fresh now as when set on paper or transmitted on television. And it all begins with these stories, which still delight, frighten, amuse, and surprise. Welcome back, Tomato Cain’ – Kim Newman
This month (July 2022) UK-based publisher of short stories and translated fiction, Comma Press are publishing a highly anticipated hardback re-issue of Nigel Kneale’s Somerset Maugham award-winning collection, Tomato Cain and Other Stories.
Originally published in 1949, Tomato Cain and Other Stories is the sole collection of short fiction by Nigel Kneale. Drawing on his experiences of growing up on the Isle of Man, many of Kneale’s tales conjure up a remote, old-fashioned community where mythology and superstition are part of everyday life. Several stories go further, making imaginative leaps into the kind of weird, eerie territory with which Kneale would go on to make his name, as the writer of TV’s Quatermass, The Road, Beasts and The Stone Tape.
Kneale is described by The League of Gentlemen‘s Mark Gatiss as ‘the man who invented popular television… absolutely as important as Dennis Potter, David Mercer, Alan Bleasdale, Alan Bennett, et al’
Though garlanded with praise on publication – it won its author the 1950 Somerset Maugham Award – Tomato Cain has long since been out of print. In the face of a steady groundswell of interest, this new edition, published by Comma Press to mark the centenary of Kneale’s birth, makes the collection available again at last, uniting the stories from both the original UK and US editions for the first time ever. It’s sure to delight Kneale’s legions of fans and indeed all admirers of skilfully-crafted stories.
Featuring two previously lost stories – ‘Billy Halloran’ (about a hitman with inner demons) and ‘It Doesn’t Matter Now’ (about a judge on his 90th birthday being accosted by a convict he wrongly imprisoned decades before), this collection represents Kneale’s only published fiction.
Publication of Tomato Cain coincides with Nigel Kneale’s centenary and a year-long series of events including a season at BFI Southbank, London.
❉ ‘Tomato Cain And Other Stories’ by Nigel Kneale will be published by Comma Press, 28th July 2022. ISBN: 9781912697656. RRP £14.99. Click here to pre-order via commapress.co.uk
❉ News source: Comma Press
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Was this book also the inspiration for the former Lynne Stringer’s stage name of Marti Caine? I recall her on This Is Your Life talking about picking a stage name from a random sentence in a book, and ‘tomato cane’ came up.