The execution, p.20
The Execution,
p.20
The policemen followed me through to the kitchen then waited there while I continued on into the garden. Marianne was sitting up now – she could see the police easily enough through the open kitchen door. She was fiddling with her hands, fiddling with the plain silver ring I’d given her years ago that I thought she’d lost. I sat down beside her and put my hand to her face: ‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’
‘But did he suffer? Did you hurt him?’
‘No. I didn’t hurt him.’
I kissed her on the forehead then on her dry lips. We stared at each other intensely for a while. Everything felt so very calm and peaceful. I looked over to the policemen. They didn’t seem in any particular hurry and I knew that they would be kind to me. I kept looking at Jessica as well. She was talking to her new teddy bear and showing it how to hold the snowdome, just as I had shown her at the toy department. Her skin would be burning under this sun and I thought to get her hat for her and some suncream from the bathroom but I knew that the moment I got up the spell would be broken and it would be over for ever. Marianne and Jessica, the garden, the birds and the leaves, everything seemed so still, frozen in this blur of heat and life like an old photograph I would never forget. The feeling of being cleansed of all hope washed through me, purifying me until I realised I was finally standing at the threshold of my own story, ready to stretch out and start again.
If you enjoyed The Execution, check out this other great Hugo Wilcken title.
From the author of the existential thriller ‘The Execution’ comes ‘Colony’, a novel set in French Guiana as the age of Empire draws to a close and anarchy beckons.
The year is 1928. Sabir – petty criminal, drifter, war veteran – is on a prison ship bound for a notorious penal colony in the French tropics. Soon after his arrival in the bagne, as it's known, Sabir is shipped out to a work camp deep in the South American jungle but quickly comes to the realisation that his old life is dead, and return to France an impossibility. Yet, if he's to survive at all, he must escape the brutality of the bagne. Posing as a professional gardener, Sabir wins the confidence and protection of the camp's naïve, idealistic Commandant. With a group of like-minded convicts – including the secretive, enigmatic Edouard, a comrade from the trenches of WW1 – he soon launches his escape bid, across the seas in a stolen boat. Bad weather forces the men ashore, condemning them to a dismal, hallucinatory tramp through the jungle. As hunger and rivalry tear the group apart, Sabir understands he has scant chance of escaping into another life.
In Part Two, Manne – deserter, itinerant exile – comes to the Colony in search of his deported friend, the same Edouard from Part One. With a false identity and cover story, Manne installs himself as a guest at the Commandant's house. There, he falls into an affair with his host's wife. Meanwhile, the Commandant is slowly unravelling, growing ever more suspicious of who Manne is and what he's doing in the Colony. Manne ends up trapped like everyone else in the bagne, and realises that he too must escape. The novel's two plot threads begin to merge – boundaries between dream and reality blur, bringing a surreal tinge to the dramatic climax.
Both a page-turning adventure story, and a bold novel of ideas, Colony takes an historical background familiar to readers of Henri Charrière's ‘Papillon’, and twists it into a metaphysical journey. Brilliantly evoking an atmosphere of colonial decline in the tropics, the novel explores the shifting natures of identity, memory and reality.
Buy the ebook here
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I have adapted a few lines from the following articles and authors: ‘At the Morgue’ by Helen Garner (in True Stories, Text Publishing, 1996) and ‘Someone Take These Dreams Away’ by Jon Savage (Mojo, July 1994).
Thanks to my family, in particular Patrick Wilcken, for his editorial input. Thanks also to Lisa Darnell, Jody Johnson, Philip Gwyn Jones and Jon Butler.
And a special thank you to Julie, for her love and support.
PRAISE
From the reviews for The Execution:
‘Taut, menacing, full of sinister beguilements. And unsettlingly shrewd.’
WILL EAVES, author of The Oversight
‘Hugo Wilcken’s first novel is a dark exploration of the fault-line between reason and action, and the ground that opens when they collide. The Execution tells the story of an African dissident, a seductive Continental, and a man unhinged by obsession – all caught in a slow dance of estrangement. Wilcken’s ideas are provocative and engaging … We are never really sure why a dead body becomes a catalyst for violence, or why a killer is compelled to stop an execution. The book is full of such black holes – dense ideas born of ambiguity – which, if you draw close enough, will suck you in.’
TLS
‘Brilliant … A diabolical thriller that echoes the best suspense of Patricia Highsmith with a cheeky nod to Dostoyevski, The Execution is a remarkably accomplished debut heralding the arrival of a noteworthy talent’.
Publishers Weekly
more reviews overleaf
‘A remarkable debut’
Dorset Echo
‘An impressive debut, The Execution craftily manages the juxtaposition of the banal and the shocking … The intense narration, which must remain lucid as it descends into nightmare, is beautifully sustained.’
The Australian
‘Gripping … A sense of fate and inevitability pervades every line. The characterisation is strong, the first-person narrative sucking the reader in … It is easy to forget that very little actually happens because of the unnerving sense of being inside someone’s head – someone whose personal contradictions grow and develop as he falls from grace without a fight. A unique and fascinating debut.’
Tribune
‘So many writers have made a “remarkable debut” recently, one wonders whether there are more people writing novels nowadays than there are reading them. So it’s a pleasant surprise to find one outreaching its blurb. Hugo Wilcken has written an extraordinary first novel: a psychological thriller that buzzes with sinister threat.’
Canberra Times
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
HUGO WILCKEN was born in Sydney in 1964, and was educated there and in London. He now lives in Paris, where he has worked as a writer since 1990. This is his first novel.
ABOUT THE PUBLISHER
Australia
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United Kingdom
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
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United States
HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
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Hugo Wilcken, The Execution
