Boundless (Unbound)

This morning, an author we are publishing at Unbound asked whether he might be able to go along to see his book get printed. It’s a fairly standard request in the publishing world — some publicists even like to make book printing a ‘content opportunity.’ The author stands there next to one of the presses as it spits out copies of their pride and joy.

As we enter a very, very uncertain time, it’s clear that the city I live in, New York City, is going to become an ark, as will other big cities around the world. The water is rising — literally — and forces are on the march that explicitly target the kinds of diversity, freedom, and creative chaos that urban centres produce. The UN estimates some 70% of us will be living in cities by 2050; it’s time to prepare and that means more than bike lanes.

My name's Joseph Rose and I'm 15 years old and I live at the edge of the civilised world. This Wall was built by the Romans 2000 years ago. The limit of Empire. Beyond it were madness, wild men, monsters. Ancient maps bear dire warnings. Danger of Death. Do Not Enter. There can be no Return. Now the tourists come, in their coaches, on their bikes, in their boots. There are museums, rebuilt forts and temples. Billboards are filled with information about the distant days.

Marilyn Muthoni Kamuru When we are free, what will we do with our freedom? Almost two decades ago, when my aunt was in her fifties, she decided to move to America. She had always lived in Kenya. A few years before, she had retired from her job, where she had been making a comfortable living. She was still married and all of her children had left home. My aunt’s decision wasn’t particularly unusual.

The lovely little chapel in the heart of Abney Park Cemetery, one of London’s ‘Magnificent Seven’ cemeteries,* has recently been restored. It is the oldest surviving non-denominational chapel in Europe. Designed by William Hosking, it was completed in 1842. My friends got married in the graveyard there not long ago.

I am a graveyard walker, though not a mournful one. There is nowhere more peaceful to wander than among the pines of a mossy cemetery in a large city. When I think back to the cities I have known, it seems to me I have lived mostly among ghosts — whether in Abney Park Cemetery in London, or Père Lachaise in Paris, or Friedhof Fluntern in Zürich, or in the vast new cemeteries of Shanghai. For a time, I taught at a university in West Berlin.

Sparsely strewn among the pews, like Gormley figures, or extras in a crime drama (of the kind where the priest is perpetually tidying hymn books), twenty clergy are seated about me for a retreat day at Edington Priory, Wiltshire. Recent months have asked much of parish priests, so I’ve invited mine here for a few hour’s peace: some inspiration ahead of the Lenten fast.

Aged 17, I stood at a crossroads that could have led to a very different life. I’d just received the first failed grade I had ever had, an E in an A Level Chemistry test, and the tears came heavy. The stress of taking two sciences — a decision I reluctantly accepted after both teachers and my family insisted I needed a ‘safe’ back-up if I was determined to take English — had me grinding my teeth so severely that I had hospital consultations for the jaw pain.

I spent a lot of my youth adrift; living and working across many parts of the world, but I didn’t experience homesickness until I was about 29. It took me a while to diagnose myself as the homesickness was manifested abstractly and came and went in quick flashes. I wouldn’t have expected homesickness to feel like a seizure, although an emotional one, but that’s how it was. I’d stop whatever I was doing and close my eyes and find myself back in Donegal.

For years, I built my career as a screenwriter, crafting stories that had to be lean, structured, and ruthlessly efficient. Every word had to pull its weight. No indulgence or waffling, just pure, distilled storytelling. The economy of language was everything. Then I transitioned to fiction, and it felt like unbuckling a very tight seatbelt. Suddenly, I had space, room to stretch, to let words breathe, to dive deep into my characters’ minds in ways that scripts never allowed.