Crushed Mexican Spiders: And Possibly Forty Ships

Crushed Mexican Spiders is classic Fischer. Don't be fooled by the title: the poet laureate of London grime is on home ground as a women returns home to discover the key to her Brixton flat no longer works -

Haunting images and crisp one-liners are about all that link it with the second tale, Possibly Forty Ships, the true story of the Trojan War. In a scene straight out of a Tarantino movie, an old man is being tortured, pressed to reveal how the greatest legend of all really happened.

Let's just say it bears scant resemblance to Homer: 'If you see war as a few ships sinking in the middle of the waves, a few dozen warriors in armour, frankly not as gleaming as it could be, being welcomed whole-heartedly by the water, far, far away from Troy, if you see that as war, then it was a war - ' The stories are being illustrated by the work of the acclaimed Czech photographer Hana Vojakova .

"Makes most other contemporary English fiction look like irrelevant persiflage." WILL SELF

"Conrad with jokes" SUNDAY TIMES