Downriver and over 1.5 million other books are available for Amazon Kindle . Learn more


or
Sign in to turn on 1-Click ordering.
Trade in Yours
For a £0.45 Gift Card
Trade in
More Buying Choices
Have one to sell? Sell yours here
Sorry, this item is not available in
Image not available for
Colour:
Image not available

 
Share your own customer images
Search inside this book
Start reading Downriver on your Kindle in under a minute.

Don't have a Kindle? Get your Kindle here, or download a FREE Kindle Reading App.

Downriver [Paperback]

Iain Sinclair (Author)
4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
RRP: £10.99
Price: £7.58 & this item Delivered FREE in the UK with Super Saver Delivery. See details and conditions
You Save: £3.41 (31%)
o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o
Only 3 left in stock (more on the way).
Dispatched from and sold by Amazon. Gift-wrap available.
Want delivery by Tuesday, 28 May? Choose Express delivery at checkout. See Details

Formats

 Amazon Price New from Used from
Kindle Edition £8.99   -- --
Hardcover --   -- --
Paperback £7.58   -- --
Audio, CD, Audiobook --   -- --
Trade In this Item for up to £0.45
Trade in Downriver for an Amazon.co.uk gift card of up to £0.45, which you can then spend on millions of items across the site. Trade-in values may vary (terms apply). Learn more

Book Description

Publication Date: 29 April 2004

Downriver is a brilliant London novel by its foremost chronicler, Iain Sinclair.

WINNER OF THE ENCORE AWARD AND THE JAMES TAIT BLACK MEMORIAL PRIZE

The Thames runs through Downriver like an open wound, draining the pain and filth of London and its mercurial inhabitants. Commissioned to document the shifting embankments of industry and rampant property speculation, a film crew of magpie scavengers, high-rent lowlife, broken criminals and reborn lunatics picks over the rivers detritus. They examine the wound, hoping to expose the cause of the city's affliction . . .

'Remarkable: part apocalyptic documentary, part moth-eaten ghost story, part detective story. Inventive and stylish, Sinclair is one of the most interesting of contemporary novelists' Sunday Times

'One of those idiosyncratic literary texts that revivify the language, so darn quotable as to be the reader's delight and the reviewer's nightmare' Guardian

'Crazy, dangerous, prophetic' Angela Carter

Iain Sinclair is the author of Downriver (winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Encore Award); Landor's Tower; White Chappell, Scarlet Tracings; Lights Out for the Territory; Lud Heat; Rodinsky's Room (with Rachel Lichtenstein); Radon Daughters; London Orbital, Dining on Stones, Hackney, that Rose-Red Empire and Ghost Milk. He is also the editor of London: City of Disappearances.

Frequently Bought Together

Downriver + London Orbital + Lights Out for the Territory
Price For All Three: £22.05

Buy the selected items together

Product details

  • Paperback: 544 pages
  • Publisher: Penguin; New Ed edition (29 April 2004)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0141014857
  • ISBN-13: 978-0141014852
  • Product Dimensions: 12.9 x 3.2 x 19.8 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 297,074 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

    •  Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?

Product Description

Review

The Thames runs through Downriver like a great, wet wound. This is a work of conspicuous and glorious ill-humour. Something is happening in this text that makes it necessary to go on (Angela Carter London Review of Books )

One of those idiosyncratic literary texts that revivify the language, so darn quotable as to be the reader's delight and the reviewer's nightmare (Guardian ) --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

From the Back Cover

The Thames may still flow through the heart of London, but life along its shores has dramatically changed. In Downriver, Iain Sinclair traces the ruin of Thatcher's reign, through the lens of a fictional film crew that has been hired to make a documentary about what's left of the river life that was.

Downriver is a savage, satirical quest to understand how people's lives, a government's policies, and a legendary waterland conspire together in a boggling display of self-destruction.

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
See all Product Description
Inside This Book (Learn More)
First Sentence
'And what,' Sabella insisted, 'is the opposite of a dog?' Her husband, Henry Milditch, continued to ignore her. Read the first page
Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
Search inside this book:

What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?

› Explore similar items

Customer Reviews

4.2 out of 5 stars
10 reviews
4.2 out of 5 stars
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
30 of 33 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars This and Mother London are the best 20 Mar 2001
By A Customer
Format:Paperback
I read this because I read somewhere (Evening Standard ?) that this and Mother London were the two best novels about London. Together -- and they are very different 'reads' on the city although often linked together -- they do make a monumental picture of a living, richly textured capital. Other writers never seem to get as thoroughly involved with their material as Sinclair and Moorcock who almost seem to think the city IS them. That is, where a writer like Martin Amis will really be writing about himself in some way and his responses to what he sees, Sinclair and Moorcock seem to ABSORB themselves in the city -- accepting it, lock, stock and occasionally smoking barrel -- and celebrating it. That celebratory note is what unites the books. This is not your usual wimp's response to the Terrors and Pitfalls of the Big City. This is I LIKE IT HERE, CRAP AND ALL. The mocking lyricism is another thing which sometimes echoes across both books. These are sophisticated writers, but they are writers of passion and they are both romantic writers in the best, most intelligent sense. Impatient with orthodoxy, suspicious of received ideas, they go and look at everything for themselves and bring us back their reports. You can't ask for better than that. You do get better than that, because you get some glorious writing and wonderful characters. Downriver is constructed as twelve interlocking narratives and has a rather monumental Victorian structure to it. It feels a bit like the Tower of London, too. Mother London in contrast is the Kew Tropical Plant House with shafts of light falling forever unexpectedly on things we hadn't noticed before. Downriver is also full of things we hadn't noticed before and I am now re-reading it because I am discovering more things I hadn't noticed the first time! This is a Chinese box of delights and Mother London is, if you like, an Albert Memorial of delights. Together they show that English fiction has not lost sight of a larger contextual universe while examining local life-forms. In spite of being about one specific city, they refute the impression of the modern English novel as provincial or, at best, regional in its focus. I can't recommend them too enthusiastically. Both these great books are built to last. JB
Comment | 
Was this review helpful to you?
Yes
No
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
2.0 out of 5 stars The beginning of the end 8 July 2012
By Geoff
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
This was the first 'big' book by Iain Sinclair, both in profile and length. There is some wonderful writing dotted about in it: the historic Tilbury and Maze Hill he conjures have a vivid strangeness familiar from his earlier poetry and prose, for example. But by god there's a lot of unfocused misanthropy here too. He hates everything, in the most hackneyed (ha!) terms: in the first 100 pages alone, there are cringe-worthy rants about alternative comedians, his (wonderful) previous books, people who take him to free dinners and give him fun jobs, the government, women who protest against the government, people who write articles criticising the government, people who went to the wrong universities, people who - like him - buy houses cheap in lovely squares recommended by John Betjeman, people who live in East London, people who don't live in East London, people who did live in East London and now don't, you.... I'm sitting there ready to join in but he never persuades me: they're all just bad cause he says so and that's that. He's not good at plot, satire, character, or structure in a work this length, but Downriver is still conventional enough in style (realism punctuated by historical visions) that it isn't really a formal experiment, or a Thomas Bernhard-style dynamic rant either. Beyond that it's difficult to put your finger on what's so "off" about the feel of the thing, considering its promising ingredients. The women who feature in his books tend to be dead and usually prostitutes, that probably doesn't help. And, while he's good at detailing the headspinning property cons going on by the riverside, he doesn't have much political insight beyond them - bit of a problem when you're presenting some kind of apocalyptic Thatcherite hell.
Comment | 
Was this review helpful to you?
Yes
No
18 of 22 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Sinclair's Splendid Smoke Opera 12 Jan 2002
By "jugadora"
Format:Paperback
I think Michael Moorcock coined the phrase 'Smoke Opera' to describe the raft of "London" books, both fiction and non-fiction, which have been published in the last few years and reaching some kind of culmination with that great work of fiction Ackroyd's "London: A Biography". Downriver remains my favourite Sinclair novel and I can't recommend it highly enough. If you want real substance, a sense of value which you get from a Victorian classic, with the sense of street suss you expect from the latest junkista. It's very persuasive writing. Like Mother London, you have to take the writer's authority on trust, because this isn't a standard modernist text, but it is so thoroughly rewarding, you will not regret giving him that trust. These are very substantial books indeed, likely to outlast most of their contemporaries! Downriver will run and run! Twelve interconnecting narratives. Twelve times the value of the average Martin Amis! I originally bought this because Laurie Taylor said it was the best value for money to take on holiday. He was right.
Comment | 
Was this review helpful to you?
Yes
No
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
Were these reviews helpful?   Let us know
Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars Magic
This book made me fall deep in love with London (and cities in general). There aren't many books I could point to and say 'This changed who I am', but this is one of them. Read more
Published 3 months ago by P Browne
4.0 out of 5 stars The Christiano Ronaldo Of British Literature
Towards the end of Iain Sinclair's 1991 novel Downriver, two of the novel's main protagonists, the narrator (a Sinclair character himself) and his associate, the sculptor Joblard,... Read more
Published 10 months ago by Keith M
5.0 out of 5 stars Not quite for the Easy Reading shelf .........
The actual story in each chapter is quite an illusive one, it has to be sought out. It is between a lot of "Sinclair to Savour". Read more
Published 11 months ago by C. A. Russell
4.0 out of 5 stars Frequently exasperating, but Sinclair's shaggy dog story has a unique...
When Angela Carter no less, whose own work couldn't exactly be described as conventional, is quoted on this book's back cover blurb describing it as "a great, strange [... Read more
Published on 4 Mar 2007 by Dr. Kenneth W. Douglas
2.0 out of 5 stars All Over the Map
I picked up this book for a number of reasons: primarily, I was intrigued by the concept of a novel comprised of twelve stories which would reveal a gritty, dark side of London's... Read more
Published on 21 Jan 2003 by A. Ross
5.0 out of 5 stars Rich and deep
This is the best of all the London books and could be one of the best novels of the past forty or fifty years! Read more
Published on 14 July 2001
5.0 out of 5 stars Read this book
This book is at the vanguard of contemporary English 'fiction'. Sinclair understands London like no-one else, he is the true successor to Blake.
Published on 7 Oct 1999 by Maldoror
Search Customer Reviews
Only search this product's reviews

There's a problem loading this menu at the moment.

Learn more about Amazon Prime.

    Your Shopping Basket is empty.

    Give it purpose -- fill it with books, DVDs, clothes, electronics and more.

    If you already have an account, sign in.

    There's a problem previewing your shopping basket at the moment.

    Check your Internet connection and go to your cart, or try again.

    View Shopping Basket (0 items)

      Customer Discussions

      This product's forum
      Discussion Replies Latest Post
      No discussions yet

      Ask questions, Share opinions, Gain insight
      Start a new discussion
      Topic:
      First post:
      Prompts for sign-in
       


      Active discussions in related forums
      Search Customer Discussions
      Search all Amazon discussions
         
      Related forums

      Listmania!

      Create a Listmania! list

      Look for similar items by category

      Feedback


      Amazon.co.uk Privacy Statement Amazon.co.uk Delivery Information Amazon.co.uk Returns & Exchanges