‘Aftermath is a major landmark in British narrative non-fiction. Read an ExcerptĮbook ISBN: 9781913505479 Reviews Max Porter Blurring genre and form, Aftermath is a profound attempt to regain trust after violence and to recapture a politics of hope through a determined dream of abolition. Contending with the pain of unspeakable loss set against public tragedy, she draws on history, memory, and powerful poetic predecessors to reckon with the systemic nature of atrocity. In this searching lament by the award-winning author of We That Are Young, Taneja interrogates the language of terror, trauma and grief the fictions we believe and the voices we exclude. ‘“I am living at the centre of a wound still fresh.” The I is not only mine.
‘It is the immediate aftermath,’ Taneja writes. Merritt oversaw her program Khan was one of her students. Preti Taneja taught fiction writing in prison for three years. That day, he killed two people: Saskia Jones and Jack Merritt. Then he went to the bathroom to retrieve the things he had hidden there: a fake bomb vest and two knives, which he taped to his wrists. On 29 November 2019, he sat with others at Fishmongers’ Hall, some of whom he knew. He was released eight years later, and allowed to travel to London for one day, to attend an event marking the fifth anniversary of a prison education programme he participated in. Usman Khan was convicted of terrorism-related offences at age 20, and sent to high-security prison.
Longlisted for the 2022 Gordon Burn Prize