Joanna Campbell
AUTHOR

Joanna Campbell

Literature & Fiction
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Joanna Campbell is the author of Instructions for the Working Day, a novel published in August 2022 by Fairlight Books. Described by The Independent as 'elegant' and 'chilling', it was also shortlisted for the 2024 The Rubery Book Award. Top fifty 2021 BBC National Short Story Award Prize-winning short story collection, When Planets Slip Their Tracks, shortlisted for The International Rubery Book Award and longlisted for the Edge Hill Short Story Prize. Winner of The London Short Story Prize Review from the 2024 Rubery Book Award: 'A pleasingly unconventional novel about the consequences of control and oppression. The story shifts between two intriguing characters: Neil, the English son of an extremely controlling German father, and Silke, former inmate of a Stasi prison. After Neil’s father dies, Neil travels back to the village in East Germany which belongs to the family and finds it slowly falling apart. He stays with Silke and her brother, and forms an unspoken connection with Silke. They are both emotionally damaged by the past, and the book explores their history in a narrative that gathers momentum as the mystery deepens: who betrayed Silke to the Stasi, and why? What shaped Neil’s father’s cruelly coercive behaviour? The novel considers the psychological legacy of totalitarianism, and the various forms of pathology its victims experience. There is an enjoyable offbeat tone to the novel, with occasional touches of humour, and convincingly eccentric characters. It’s a stylish and very readable novel, extremely enjoyable.'
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