The Book Tour by Andi Watson

​A minor British author embarks on a small-time book tour and finds himself descending further and further into a maddening Kafkaeque nightmare.
This random library find turned out to be a complete delight. The author and the writer are one and the same and there’s a certain pleasing coherence and symmetry of narrative about it.
The art is minimal but surprisingly effective, even when it comes to portraiture, and the story itself is engaging and compelling as it veers between absurd and darkly menacing.
The man’s suitcase is stolen. No one comes to buy his books and have them signed; the itinerary continues to change in notes received from an unseen publisher. The author’s family is also unseen, only presumed on the other end of the conversation. Someone is killing women working at the bookstores he visits. The police are always wanting to talk with him.
It’s a comedy of a neverending series of misunderstandings, but therein also lies a tragedy of being but a toy for some unseen indifferent at best forces at play. Of getting lost in and becoming a fodder to a faceless careless bureaucratic machine.
Good, scary, good. A lovely balance of light and dark in the narrative. Nicely done. Recommended.