Count from Zero to One Hundred

Taking his cue from Japanese author Kenzaburō Ōe's Rouse Up O Young Men of the New Age , Alan Cunningham has produced a debut novella that is both beautiful and experimental - a powerful exploration of sexuality, placelessness and the body. Count from Zero to One Hundred is written as a series of prose fragments, fluctuating from conversation to philosophical reflection in an anxious stuttering staccato, as its narrator moves across some of the great cities of Europe - Berlin, London, Dublin, Budapest - and other parts of the world. Traces of Beckett and Joyce are felt in this moving and contemporary meditation on the limits and vulnerability of the body, and the power of language and imagination to transcend those limits. - Reviews 'Structured as a series of interconnected vignettes this novella offers an intriguing intermingling of intensely personal meditations, yet simultaneously rigorously analytical observations on intimacy and the body. Language and bodies become entangled, acting on themselves and each other, both as tools of observation and physical transformation. Count from Zero to One Hundred can be read in one breathless session, yet also creates an extended moment of reflection and questions to which one can keep returning.' Jeroen Nieuwland 'In Count from Zero to One Hundred, Alan Cunningham opens windows into a life in transit, into a mind that is only at times happy with the distortions and indecisions it produces.' Nick Sweeney, Sabotage Reviews