num_pages: 218
description: Best known for his gritty novels of London life and his weird and often horrific short fiction in Clock Without Hands (1949) Gerald Kersh delivers three novellas each very different but all showcasing the virtuosity of his storytelling. Clock Without Hands relates the unexpected and macabre impact of a sordid murder on the mild-mannered neighbour who witnesses the crime. In Flight to the Worlds End a desperate boy flees his cruel life at an orphanage only to discover a harsh truth about the world outside. And in Fairy Gold a clerk plays a malicious practical joke on his impoverished co-worker with unpredictable and startling consequences.Gerald Kersh (1911-1968) published more than thirty books including the noir classic Night and the City (1938) and Fowlers End (1957) which Anthony Burgess called one of the great comic novels of the century as well as hundreds of short stories which were once ubiquitous in British and American magazines. But though he has been championed by Angela Carter Harlan Ellison Ian Fleming Michael Moorcock and others Kersh has undeservedly fallen into neglect since his death. This edition of one of his lesser-known books is the first-ever reprint and includes a new introduction by Thomas Pluck.CONTEMPORARY REVIEWSHow easy Mr. Kersh makes it all seem! How admirably he sets the scene the atmosphere . . . very neatly done.  The ObserverThree short rough novels hard-hitting battering the emotions without compunction . . . Kersh tells a story as such rather better than anybody else.  Pamela Hansford Johnson Daily Telegraph
language: English
title: Clock Without Hands
publisher: Valancourt Books