Author(s): John King

Fiction

Jimmy has reached a crossroads in his life. After many months of drifting and drinking his way around Europe he finds himself at the sharp edge of the empire, incarcerated in Seven Towers, a notorious hilltop prison, peering into the abyss. Jimmy has always been an outsider, but is now a fully-fledged alien, who doesn't understand the language or customs of the other inmates, just that their crimes range from shoplifting and drug addiction to murder and rape. But what exactly is the nature of Jimmy's offence? And what is the dark secret that haunts his every move? Seven Towers is another name for Hell: a place where squalor and fear are endemic and imagination is the only means of escape. The characters Jimmy meets inside push his sanity to the brink: the silent, pyjama-clad Papa with his knitting needle, the cheerful killer and mutilator known as the Butcher, the gentle Franco and the cruel Homer, and Dumb Dumb, a deaf mute building a better world out of matchsticks. Intercutting the terror and paranoia of prison life with Jimmy's memories of his childhood and his travels - real and imaginary.