Hollow

Hollow is a novel by B. Catling that follows a group of mercenaries hired to deliver a church's ultimate power, a sacred oracle, as the decadence of carnival gives way to the gravity of lent and the mystic landscape grows ravenous. It is a Bosch painting that explores the history of art and the creatures depicted in it. The novel is filled with monsters and scenes painted by Bosch and Bruegel, such as the devil playing dice, a lewd mock wedding, and creatures indulging in inter-species sexual play. Catling is an artist who has been able to create a modern narrative masterpiece that brings the painterly genius of Bosch and Breugel alive on the page.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 272 pages
Publication date: 30 June 2022
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

From the author of the Vorrh Trilogy comes an epic odyssey following a group of mercenaries hired to deliver a church's ultimate power—a sacred oracle—as the decadence of carnival gives way to the gravity of lent and the mystic landscape grows ravenous—all set within a Bosch painting.

The history of art contains no more imaginative or mysterious paintings than the landscapes of Hieronymus Bosch. Art historians ask where the weird creatures depicted there came from, and so too do the central characters of Hollow as they fight their way across these landscapes and encounter these creatures. Author B. Catling is the first novelist to engage fully with Bosch's vision and climb imaginatively into it.

In this novel, it emerges that Bosch gave color and form to monsters, letting them into the real world, and that they were still there.

Brilliantly wrought, wonderful, and as crunchy and bitter-cold as snow, Hollow is never less than tremendous fun. Catling is a great and wild talent, a raucous novel that thrills and unsettles in equal measure. - TLS

P. rose that's sprinkled with neologisms and archaisms, and as crunchy and bitter-cold as snow, it's a nigh unclassifiable work, and all the better for that. - Financial Times

As with all the best fiction, there is a terrifying inevitability about Hollow. Let it devour you.

Iain Sinclair, author of Ghost Milk, unsettling and delightful, very clever fun, a sheer, shuddering delight, both frightening and hilarious. Catling is a rare kind of writer.

Scotland on Sunday

Weight: 194g
Dimension: 128 x 196 x 22 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781529366464