Manchester: Something Rich and Strange

Description

Using 60 different words that speak of the city, from bees to sewers, Manchester: something rich and strange offers a new way of thinking about this iconic post-industrial city. Twenty-three writers from diverse backgrounds offer their take on the everyday things that inform how we experience Manchester, recognising that we're all active in the making and unmaking of the city's spaces. -- .

Paul Dobraszczyk is a researcher and writer based in Manchester and a Teaching Fellow at the Bartlett School of Architecture in London. He is the author of Future Cities: Architecture and the Imagination (2019) and The Dead City: Urban Ruins and the Spectacle of Decay (2017). Sarah Butler is a novelist and Lecturer in Creative Writing at the Manchester Writing School, Manchester Metropolitan University. She is the author of Jack & Bet (2020) and Ten Things I've Learnt About Love: A Novel (2014) and explores the relationship between writing and place through her consultancy UrbanWords. -- .

'Dobraszczyk and Butler have gathered together a set of excavations and forgagings which piece together very different visions of the towns and developments and rivers and canals and in-between spaces that make up the disjointed, uneven, ever-changing city of Manchester. Here, in the book's exploration of undervalued urban spaces, readers will find the traces of other futures, snickets and ginnels, a rumour of salmon, slow-worms appearing in old brickworks, the amazing story of the city's hibakujumoko trees, and myriad other transplantations and spaces that twenty-first-century time has passed by.' John McAuliffe, poet and Reader of Creative Writing and Modern Literature, University of Manchester 'Manchester: Something rich and strange epitomises everything that is wonderful about this great city. The book tells the story of Manchester's past and present in a unique and engaging way, bringing together a variety of contributors from a variety of different backgrounds.' Michala Hulme, author of A grim almanac of Manchester and Bloody British history: Manchester' 'It is a book like the city; bold, brash, and gobby, moving from morbid self-pity to delirious triumph in mere moments. A guided tour where they pull up the floorboards and let you see what lies beneath.' Manchester Review of Books 'There's strong material in this ragbag of themed think-pieces - Rose recalling the attack which prompted her to reclaim the streets from her nightmares; Kalu conjuring the realities of Manchester's sewer system with unnerving brio; Tim Edensor on the sources of municipal cobble stone; Hanson on the ubiquity of facades in post-modern, post-Factory Records Manchester - plus Simon Buckley's celebrated 'iPhone Lowry' on the cover and a good helping of Dobraszczyk's magnificently crisp photography.' Manchester Confidential -- .