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THE PLATINUM RAVEN AND OTHER NOVELLAS - collection of four novellas - paperback
Genres: LGBTQ+, Literary Fiction, Magical Realism
Age Groups: 18+
Formats: Paperback
https://www.rohanquine.com/press-media/the-novellas-reviews-media
"The Platinum Raven and other novellas" by Rohan Quine is a paperback comprising a collection of four novellas—"The Platinum Raven", "The Host in the Attic", "Apricot Eyes" and "Hallucination in Hong Kong"—each novella being also available by itself as an ebook. A Distinguished Favorite in the NYC Big Book Award 2021, these four novellas are literary fiction with a touch of magical realism and a dusting of horror, celebrating the darkest and brightest possibilities of human imagination, personality and language.
"The Platinum Raven" is a triple convulsion whereby our heroine Raven escalates herself into the Chocolate Raven and then the Platinum Raven, from London to Dubai to the tower in the hills in the desert—then back down again, forever changed. The daydreams of the downtrodden Raven propel her into a fantasy life as a more glamorous version of herself: a party girl living in the world’s tallest building, the Burj Khalifa. This latter’s imagination then spawns a yet more empowered and intense version of herself, as empress of a sequence of events whose fusion of extraordinary beauty, violence and sensuality is bewitching… A Distinguished Favorite in the NYC Big Book Award 2021.
"The Host in the Attic" is a hologram of Oscar Wilde's "The Picture of Dorian Gray", digitised and reframed in cinematic style, set in London's Docklands in a few years’ time. High-flyer Jaymi discovers a secret novel online called The Imagination Thief, written by a woman named Alaia; and they meet and fall in love. In his attic he hides the prototype of a new worldwide Web-browsing hologram, for whose appearance he was the model. While this hologram deteriorates into ever more terrifying corruption, Jaymi’s appearance remains forever sweet and youthful, despite his escalating evil … until the inevitable reckoning unfolds. A Distinguished Favorite in the NYC Big Book Award 2021.
In "Apricot Eyes", a cat-and-mouse pursuit through the New York City night involves a preacher, a psychic and a dominatrix, broadcast live on air—until a horror is unearthed, bringing two of them together and the third to a sticky end. Beneath a waterfront waste ground in the Bronx, a monstrous population is being fattened up, by the preacher, for malign purposes. Jaymi and Scorpio are on his tracks, however, in a blast of fun that trumpets boldness, tolerance and voltage, celebrating the mystery and dangers furled just behind the surface of the everyday. A Distinguished Favorite in the NYC Big Book Award 2021.
In "Hallucination in Hong Kong", sliding from joy to nightmare and back, a plane-flight frames a journey into Jaymi's and Angel's polarised identities and perceptions, where past and present merge in an obsessive fantasy of love, death, horror and apocalyptic beauty. At take-off, warmed by the presence of his friend Angel beside him, Jaymi starts to doze, and enters a fog of horror in seeming to remember that their destination lies in the past, not ahead … forcing him to explore those hellish possible events lying beneath the surface of our present and future, always ready to break through into reality. A Distinguished Favorite in the NYC Big Book Award 2021.
REVIEWS:
https://www.rohanquine.com/press-media/the-novellas-reviews-media
VIDEO-BOOKS:
https://www.rohanquine.com/t-p-r-video-book
and
https://www.rohanquine.com/t-p-r-video-book/short-teasers-for-the-platinum-raven-video-book
and
https://www.rohanquine.com/t-h-i-t-a-video-book
and
https://www.rohanquine.com/t-h-i-t-a-video-book/short-teasers-for-the-host-in-the-attic-video-book
and
https://www.rohanquine.com/a-e-video-book
and
https://www.rohanquine.com/a-e-video-book/short-teasers-for-apricot-eyes-video-book
and
https://www.rohanquine.com/h-h-k-video-book
and
https://www.rohanquine.com/h-h-k-video-book/short-teasers-for-hallucination-in-hong-kong-video-book
BUY:
https://www.rohanquine.com/buy/the-platinum-raven-and-other-novellas-paperback
Rohan Quine, The Platinum Raven and other novellas, literary fiction, magical realism, dark fantasy, cyberpunk, visionary, horror, gay, LGBT, transgender, Burj Khalifa, Dubai, Shard, towers, imagination, fairy tale, contemporary, The Host in the Attic, Dorian Gray, hologram, London, attic, The Imagination Thief, corridor, Docklands, Ontario Tower, Apricot Eyes, New York, worms, Bronx, subway, Hunts Point, Hallucination in Hong Kong, Hong Kong, concert, catatonia, plane flight, The Peak
Reviews
Iris Murdoch
I have now been reading "Hallucinations" with great pleasure [...] you are indeed a star.
[This endorsement appears in a letter from Iris Murdoch to Rohan Quine, a scan of which appears at Quine's website at the link below. ("Hallucinations", published in print in the US only, was the previous title of this publication "The Platinum Raven and other novellas"; it contained somewhat earlier versions of "Apricot Eyes", "Hallucination in Hong Kong" and a few chapters of "The Platinum Raven".)]
Dan Holloway
Rohan Quine is one of the most brilliant and original writers around. His "The Imagination Thief" blended written and spoken word and visuals to create one of the most haunting and complex explorations of the dark corners of the soul you will ever read. Never one to do something simple when something more complex can build up the layers more beautifully, he is back with a collection of 4 seamlessly interwoven novellas. [...] suffice to say he is the consummate master of sentencecraft. His prose is a warming sea on which to float and luxuriate. But that is only half of the picture. He has a remarkable insight into the human psyche, and he demonstrates it by lacquering layer on layer of subtle observation and nuance. Allow yourself to slip from the slick surface of the water and you will soon find yourself tangled in a very deep and disturbing world, but the dangers that lurk beneath the surface are so enticing, so intoxicating it is impossible to resist their call.
Jane Davis, Amazon
Rohan Quine is a master of words, his world is also accessible, and it's a place you definitely need to visit. With echoes of Jennifer Egan's "Goon Squad", Quine captures all that is beautiful, but he doesn't shy away from all that is ugly. What links the four novellas together is that his characters are all searching for that something beyond the everyday, beyond the ordinary, and Quine is a god, having them dole out kindness and justice. In his world, everything that is commonplace would be annihilated. This is the kind of read you have to give yourself up to. [...] When you emerge on the other side with a greater understanding of what it means to be "that animal called human", then that will be the time to stop and ask, "What just happened?"
Awards
New York City Big Book Award -- Distinguished Favorite, Anthology category
Nov 30th, -0001