Paul Duke - No Ruined Stone

1st edition published by Hartmann, 2018 (750 copies)

Format: Softcover with dustjacket, 230x300mm

Pages: 112

Condition: Very good. Some minor shelf wear.

No Ruined Stone is a book of a new and ambitious series of work which feels like a fresh chapter in Duke’s work. It is a much more personal body of work, which led Duke to return to the estate where he lived in his early years. The Muirhouse Estate outside Edinburgh has taken on mythic status; this was where Irvine Welsh lived, which inspired him to write Trainspotting. The cult Danny Boyle film of this novel has burnt this estate into the retina of a generation.

The estate, of course, is not the problem, nor are its inhabitants. What the estate symbolises is our ongoing inability as a society to deal with social deprivation and poverty and all its associated issues. In Duke’s work we see the inevitable food bank, something that has become a symbol of recent brutal government social welfare policy leaving larger and larger numbers of people without access to basics such as food.