Justin Robertson

The confessions of a time travelling cultural vampire wherein the alternative history of late 20th century counter culture is revealed. Sent on a holy mission at a young age the young demon Jonah Plantagenet uses his God given gifts to pillage the past. From the mists of pre-history via Roman Britain to the birth of Acid House, the arcades of Slough to the court of King John, chip shops in Manchester to biker rumbles in California this Son of a Demon God takes the words from J G Ballard''s mouth, swipes the genius of Kandinsky, sucks out the minds of famous DJs, possesses Rudolf Steiner and resurrects the Beatles. Jonah Plantagenet the world''s most celebrated DJ, prize winning author, feted artist and arbiter of cultural fashion. History''s greatest criminal. Now he must face his judgement. Justin Robertson weaves a breathless tale infused with dark humour and a keen appreciation of the absurd. In parts very loosely autobiographical The Trial of Jonah captures the magic and wonder of art, music and word and reflects on how the creative process is really one protracted act of possession.

Fragile Empire reinterprets the rise of slavery in the early English tropics through an innovative geographic framework. It examines slavery at English sites in tropical zones across the Atlantic and Indian oceans, and argues that a variety of factors ? epidemiology, slave majorities, European rivalries, and the power of indigenous polities ? made the seventeenth-century English tropical empire particularly fragile, creating a model of empire in the tropics that was distinct from other English colonizations. English people across the tropics were outnumbered by their slaves. English slavery was forged in the tropics and it was increasingly marked by its permanence, inflexibility, and brutality. Early English societies were not the inevitable precursor to British imperial dominance, instead they were wrought with internal vulnerabilities and external threats from European and non-European competitors. Based on thorough archival research, Justin Roberts'' important new study redefines our understanding of slavery and bound labor from a global perspective.