Collisions
In the twilight zone between life and death
COLLISIONS is best selling author AFN Clarke's first work of fiction, a surreal novel about a soldier's near death experience. It was published not long after his bestselling autobiography CONTACT.
David Trowse, a critically injured soldier is close to the edge of death and to losing his mind. In the struggle to survive he tries to ravel together fragments of his past with the present - both civilian and military - to revive old interests, acquaintances and find the common thread of his life again. But the pieces obstinately refuse to fit; anachronisms begin to jar and old relationships are tangled with new.
The pattern that ought to emerge keeps lurching alarmingly into nightmare and horror, as reality takes on aspects of fantasy. The contradictions rush together in a series of increasingly violent collisions, and accelerate to a petrifying climax that casts reality itself in doubt.
This is a both fascinating and disturbing novel, a look inside the mind of a well-trained killer who is also a creative, caring, soulful individual who has undergone violent, traumatic, life-threatening and heart-wrenching experiences, and is trying to find his mental, emotional and spiritual centre again.
COLLISIONS draws on AFN Clarke’s own near death experiences, and readers beware - the violence is graphic as is the language frank - but the authenticity of the experience requires it, requires the reader to live each word and feel the fire within.
For adult readers only (graphic violence, frank language).
First published in hardback by Martin Secker & Warburg 1986.
Book length: 256 pages
