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Iain Sinclair

Hackney, That Rose-Red Empire: A Confidential Report Hardcover – 26 Feb. 2009

by Iain Sinclair (Author)

4.2 45 ratings

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Once an Arcadian suburb of grand houses, orchards and conservatories, Hackney declined into a zone of asylums, hospitals and dirty industry. Persistently revived, reinvented, betrayed, it has become a symbol of inner-city chaos, crime and poverty. Now, the Olympics, a final attempt to clamp down on a renegade spirit, seeks to complete the process: erasure disguised as 'progress'.

In this 'documentary fiction', Sinclair meets a cast of the dispossessed, including writers, photographers, bomb-makers and market traders. Legends of tunnels, Hollow Earth theories and the notorious Mole Man are unearthed. He uncovers traces of those who passed through Hackney: Lenin and Stalin, novelists Joseph Conrad and Samuel Richardson, film-makers Orson Welles and Jean-Luc Godard, Tony Blair beginning his political career, even a Baader-Meinhof urban guerrilla on the run. And he tells his own story: of forty years in one house in Hackney, of marriage, children, strange encounters, deaths.

Print length

592 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Hamish Hamilton
Publication date

26 Feb. 2009
Dimensions

16.2 x 5 x 24 cm
ISBN-10

0241142164
ISBN-13

978-0241142165
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Product description

Review

'An explosion of literary fireworks' -- Peter Ackroyd, The Times

'Few books become causes celebres before they are published. But Sinclair's is one' -- Guardian

'On his territory there's nobody to touch him' -- Sunday Times

'Sinclair at his best . . . One of the finest books about London in recent decades' -- Sukhdev Sandhu, Daily Telegraph

Review

'An explosion of literary fireworks'

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Hamish Hamilton; First Edition (26 Feb. 2009)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 592 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0241142164
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0241142165
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 16.2 x 5 x 24 cm

Best Sellers Rank: 176,645 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- 1,836 in Travel Writing (Books)
- 26,342 in Contemporary Fiction (Books)

Customer reviews:
4.2 45 ratings

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4.2 out of 5

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Alan Rayner

A badly-written take on an area deserving better

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 26 July 2016

Verified Purchase

I gave up reading this book after a couple of chapters. It is exceptionally badly written - with
many "sentences" not containing a verb. This makes it very hard work attempting to glean
any sense from the narrative - especially with a considerable number of non-sequiturs giving
an overall staccato effect and consequent absence of empathy induced in the reader.

From 1972-1989 I lived in Hackney and so I was interested in gaining some insight into
changes occurring since my departure. This book did not fulfil that function, Clearly the
author has engaged with the subject matter but seems to have great difficulty with any
form of actual communication with this reader. Given the lavish praise in some of the
reviews, I can but imagine that the reviewers and the author live in a metropolitan silo
that has developed in isolation since my era of residence in the capital.

This is not a rural lambast. I consder myself a European and spend five months or so
each year in another EU country as well as time in South West England. There are
many good things waiting to be told about Hackney but this book is not the place at
which to expect to find them.

8 people found this helpful

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D G Beasley

Memories and psychogeography

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 2 October 2015

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I haven't read it all yet. Got it on whim and brought lots of memories back. Great value and delivered promptly.

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nickslider

a confidential report

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 23 January 2012

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Read the subtitle folks, this is not meant to be a conventional history of Hackney - rather the reverse, a confidential secret history, and yes a memoir (there's more of his personal life here than ever before), a trawling of obscure byways and far-fetched connections. An underground history. A dense collage of fragments which weave themselves fascinatingly together to a shattering conclusion. The work of a master, a magus. Treasure this.

6 people found this helpful

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Denise Ward

A very good book.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 17 May 2013

Verified Purchase

I really like this book. Very informative. Iain Sinclair has a very distinct style of writing. I enjoyed the way he wrote abou the ins and outs of Hackney.

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Curiosity informed the cat

Great book. Anyone who has lived in the great ...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 4 December 2015

Verified Purchase

Great book. Anyone who has lived in the great borough will recognise the terrain. Iain Sinclair is sharp and erudite with an inner urban eye to convert the banal into something fascinating. A true story-teller

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Deeply disappointed

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 14 March 2023

Hackney is dear to me. I lived there from 1986-1994. I bought my first flat there, I bought my first house there, I married there, and had my most interesting and fun job there. I’d heard about this book and wanted it so when it was on sale at a discount I snapped it up.

The book lacks structure and plot line making it difficult to read or follow. One reviewer talked about fireworks. I would liken it more to the sparks to a car engine when it won’t start. The author clearly loves Hackney too. These flashes of description that sparkle admits the rubble that could only have been written by someone who does. But he doesn’t take the reader anywhere, never mind an interesting tour of the borough. It’s as if the writer regurgitated his notes without editing - and these notes had been soaked in rain and rotted in mildew to such an extent even the writer couldn’t follow his own thinking. An opportunity missed. A great writer. A great borough. A terrible combination.

I gave two stars rather than one because the flashes of good stuff really is very good indeed.

2 people found this helpful

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C. A. Russell

A must-read for Iain Sinclair fans

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 16 January 2013

Verified Purchase

Anyone who loves London but is unwilling to tramp the streets as thoroughly as Mr Sinclair must get a copy of this.

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A Cool Customer

Classic Iain Sinclair

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 21 December 2013

Classic Iain Sinclair: a blend of obscure information, refracted genius, conspiracy theories, brilliant jokes that you never quite get.
Sinclair over the years has carved out a territory all of his own.
I think that this book must have been a little closer to Sinclair's heart than some of his others. It's set on his home turf and he talks at length about his family life. It's a softer, older Sinclair than the almost sinister figure of the past.
Maybe slightly long, a little patchy, but still very good.

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Hackney, That Rose-Red Empire: A Confidential Report Hardcover – 26 Feb. 2009

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