Unbound unfurls Meades’ first work of fiction in 20 years

Unbound has launched a crowdfunder for Empty Wigs, author Jonathan Meades’ first work of fiction in 20 years. 

The publisher described the 1,200-page novel as a “hallucinatory ride in a gilded vessel through the sickness and labyrinthine squalor of the long 20th century and its many poisonous antecedents”.

“Empty Wigs is a return to the novel’s origins: stories within stories, frames within frames, mazes within mazes, colliding narratives, ‘realities’ which elide and separate, quick changing moods,” the synopsis explains.

Meades is a writer, journalist, essayist and filmmaker. He is the author of several titles, including Filthy English (Fourth Estate), Peter Knows What Dick Likes (Paladin) and Pompey (Unbound). 

He has written for and acted across TV and film, including “Jerry Building, Joe Building, Ben Building”, “Father to the Man”, “Magnetic North”, “Off Kilter”, “The Joy of Essex”, “Bunkers, Brutalism and Bloodymindedness” and “Jargon”.

Unbound co-founder and publisher John Mitchinson said: “I’ve worked with Jonathan for more than 20 years – we’ve done eight books together – but this is the first time I’ve published his fiction. It was worth the wait. In its heft and ambition there is nothing to match Empty Wigs in the modern English novel.

“It contains multitudes, a huge cast of characters spread through 18 chapters that link, clash and chime across 1,200 pages, each brimming with his trademark erudition and fearsome articulacy; his forensic obsession with death and decay – both moral and physical; his scorching disdain for ideologies and religions; his encyclopaedic knowledge of 20th-century history and popular culture; his libidinous enthusiasm for the details of food and fashion. Unsurprisingly, it will come with an index.”

“Empty Wigs is a gargantuan pitch-black comic masterpiece that will offend, enrage, excite and dazzle its readers,” he added. “In other words, it’s peak Meades, and peak Unbound, too.”