Presented as a collection of articles about apocryphal artworks, exhibitions, books and other cultural phenomena, Sunsets and Dogshits follows the convention of a “collected writings” book. Most pieces adopt a well-recognized format – for example a catalogue essay for an exhibition, a book review or an item of sports correspondence – but at the same time they incorporate incongruous elements or attempt to see things from inverted perspectives. For example, ‘The Hudson Variation’ is a review of a book about chess hooliganism, while ‘Whipping Boys’ imagines the criminal memoir written from the viewpoint of professional victims, and ‘The George Carnegie Award’ is a critical review of the writers shortlisted for the best use of a semicolon in the English language.
Witty, trenchantly funny, flittingly flirting with genres as diverse as poetry, philosophy, biography, volumes on municipal architecture and technical manuals, Sunsets and Dogshits is destined to become a classic of its kind.
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'...Sean Ashton has a genuine gift for one-liners. I loved the description, in the persona of a literary scholar, of Eric Bristow smoking while playing darts: "Eric is quite literally prospering with one hand while killing himself with the other."'
The Guardian
'Ashton has an insatiable appetite for flesh from the hands of the liberal establishment that has fed him. The results are as comically entertaining as they are wickedly subversive...The best of his writing brings the prolix wit of Monty Python to the disturbing dystopias of Will Self.'
The Independent
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Interview with Sean Ashton
Read an excerpt from
Sunsets and Dogshits
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