Join us in Stockport for an evening with author Rupert Dastur on Wednesday 28th May when he’ll be talking to owner Kelly about his stunning debut Cloudless – a beautiful and heartbreaking novel set against the majestic Welsh landscape that explores themes of love, loss and loyalty as a farming family wait for their son to return from the Iraq War.

The talk will be followed by an audience Q&A and booksigning. Light refreshments are included in the ticket price.

Event starts at 6:30pm (doors at 6pm)

About the book:

It is autumn 2004 and in a farmhouse on the hills outside Llandudno, a family endures the agonizing wait for their son to return from Iraq. His decision to join up has left them reeling, yet there are other pressing concerns to be met at home: the working of the farmland 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, giving the boys’ doting mother a glimpse into the life she could have had. And John, their father, falls once more into his gambling habit, even as the farm sits on the brink of bankruptcy.

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.

“Deeply moving … Set on a hill farm in north Wales, the cycles of the natural world are rendered with the same power and exactitude as the human dramas of love and loss which exist alongside them. Beautiful and unflinching, Cloudless is a phenomenal debut” – Anna Hope

About the author:

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.