Description

‘The best evocation I’ve read of London in the ’80s’ Neil Tennant

‘I loved Souvenir . . . it rescued some things for me – a certain aesthetic, a philosophical engagement with time and poignant beauty and lived history that I have found myself looking for, and not finding, elsewhere in recent years . . . the book gave me new hope’ John Burnside

‘A suspended act of retrieval, a partisan recall; a sustained, subtle summary of our recent past, and an epitaph for a future we never had’ Philip Hoare

‘Michael Bracewell proves himself to be nothing less than the poet laureate of late capitalism’ Jonathan Coe

A vivid eulogy for London of the late 1970s and early 80s – the last years prior to the rise of the digital city. An elliptical, wildly atmospheric remembrance of the sites and soundtrack, at once aggressively modern and strangely elegiac, that accompanied the twilight of one era and the dawn of another. Haunted bedsits, post-punk entrepreneurs in the Soho Brasserie, occultists in Fitzrovia, Docklands before Canary Wharf, frozen suburbs in the winter of 1980…

Publisher Review

The best evocation I've read of London in the '80s -- Neil Tennant Michael Bracewell's exquisitely written book is a suspended act of retrieval, a partisan recall; a sustained, subtle summary of our recent past, and an epitaph for a future we never had. Told in shards of images, in postcards from the streets, clubs, clothes and chords, SOUVENIR reclaims the capital city. It is the story of a London told in a demi-decade,1975-1908 - one which formed the modern world. After SOUVENIR, that time and place will be forever remembered, in Bracewell's elegant prose -- Philip Hoare A tone poem of clean reflection and hallucinatory detail -- Jon Savage Michael Bracewell proves himself to be nothing less than the poet laureate of late capitalism -- Jonathan Coe