Pariah Genius

In Pariah Genius, literary giant Iain Sinclair follows in the footsteps of photographer John Deakin, whose chronicles of Soho life and the world of Francis Bacon and his friends have so influenced our perception of that generation's work.

In this bold fictionalisation, Sinclair enters the underworld of Deakin's life and imagination, pursuing his subject across continents, in dive bars, and bedrooms. The result is an engrossing, utterly unique portrait of a man who some felt was a fallen angel, and others, the devil himself.

'His lexicon is occult as well as criminal. This is a world of negatives, dark rooms and transparencies. He inverts the old anthropological canard about groups [...] believing that the camera steals the soul. Sinclair presents Deakin's imagined life as a form of botched exorcism, with the subjects warped, distorted and smeared like sitters in a Bacon painting.' Stuart Kelly, The Spectator

'Pariah Genius gives us a rollicking account of the celebrity criminals, obliging osteopaths and screaming queens of the seedy quarter. This "brotherhood of the damned" was caught by Deakin's unforgiving camera, his prints bringing out their terror and melancholy. [...] Sinclair gives brilliant, pungent accounts of the sacred sites: Wheeler's oyster bar, the Colony Club, the Waterman's Arms and the French House. [...] Sinclair is particularly imaginative with his cinematic and literary parallels and digressions.' Roger Lewis, The Times

'The result is a remarkable fictional biography or "psychobiographic fiction" - written in Sinclair's highly poetic and dazzlingly allusive prose.' Tancred Newbury, Literary Review