Description
Available in trade paperback and ebook formats, Try Not to Be Strange is also available as a hardcover printed in a limited edition of 300 copies, signed and numbered by the author. It’s available exclusively from Biblioasis.
On his fifteenth birthday, in the summer of 1880, future science-fiction writer M.P. Shiel sailed with his father and the local bishop from their home in the Caribbean out to the nearby island of Redonda—where, with pomp and circumstance, he was declared the island’s king. A few years later, when Shiel set sail for a new life in London, his father gave him some advice: Try not to be strange. It was almost as if the elder Shiel knew what was coming.
Try Not to Be Strange: The Curious History of the Kingdom of Redonda tells, for the first time, the complete history of Redonda’s transformation from an uninhabited, guano-encrusted island into a fantastical and international kingdom of writers. With a cast of characters including forgotten sci-fi novelists, alcoholic poets, vegetarian publishers, Nobel Prize frontrunners, and the bartenders who kept them all lubricated while angling for the throne themselves, Michael Hingston details the friendships, feuds, and fantasies that fueled the creation of one of the oddest and most enduring micronations ever dreamt into being. Part literary history, part travelogue, part quest narrative, this cautionary tale about what happens when bibliomania escapes the shelves and stacks is as charming as it is peculiar—and blurs the line between reality and fantasy so thoroughly that it may never be entirely restored.
Praise for Try Not to Be Strange
“Full of colorful personalities, exotic locales, and unexpected twists, this is a jaunty historical footnote.”
—Publishers Weekly
Praise for Michael Hingston
“[Hingston] does it all with a delicious sense of humour.”
—Quill & Quire (starred review)
“Wise and love-driven … full of observations, analysis, and well-researched history.”
—Edmonton Journal
“A fresh take on the campus novel, Michael Hingston’s debut is a droll, incisive dissection of the terrible, terribly exciting years known as post-adolescence.”
—Patrick deWitt, author of The Sisters Brothers
“This book captures the joy and excitement at first discovering Calvin and Hobbes, and the wistful sadness that it is no more.”
—Patton Oswalt
“The Dilettantes is a whip-smart and very funny literary portrait of the post-ironic generation. Don’t miss this.”
—Zoe Whittall, author of The Best Kind of People
“His insights are rich and concise, but he never commandeers the work, as is the habit with writing about pop culture. As a critic, Hingston uses light touches of salt to bring out the flavours already in the work … A fine companion to a comic about a kid without much interest in companionship.”
—Bookshelf News
