Fragmented by Jeremy Worman

Debut collection from London journalist

Charting an innovative perspective on London from 70s Hippy to establishment figure.

Brings together stories and fragments previously published in The London Magazine, Ambit, Cork Literary Review, Dream Catcher, the Penniless Press, The Frogmore Papers etc.

Fragmented brings together short stories and sketches, charting a personal journey from squatter and hippy in Seventies London to creative and stable middle age as husband, father, teacher and writer. Responding to and recording social change, often by seizing moments in the flux of city life, the stories are both self contained fragments and a cohesive narrative of a city as much as of an individual.

Many sketches are set in Hackney or Hornsey Rise – at one time the largest squat in Europe. Fragmented brings to life characters and places; examines the underside of London epitomised by outsiders, drugs, racial tension and crime, and explores deeper themes not only of childhood, family and relationships, but also of the nature of writing, political idealism, fear of oblivion and how we conjure and retain a sense of the past. The tone is variously reflective, nostalgic, critical, humorous and detached.

Jeremy Worman has reviewed for The Observer, The Sunday Telegraph, The Spectator, the New Statesman, the TLS and many other publications. ‘Storm at Galesburg’ won the Cinnamon Press Short Story Competition in 2009 and ‘Terry’ won the Waterstones / Multi-Storey competition in 2002. His short stories and poems have been published widely. His first novel It’s All Right, Ma is with his literary agent Christopher Sinclair-Stevenson. He has degrees in English from London University and Cambridge University and teaches English Literature to American students at Birkbeck.