Donjong Heights by Ben Borek

Donjong Heights is a darkly humorous mock-heroic tale of a young man’s lost love and lost hope, written with Byronic wit and an impressive command of form.

Ben Borek is an exceptionally talented poet who demonstrates an impressive command of form. Donjong Heights, his debut, is an hilarious novel in verse set in South London, concerning the ill-fated physical and romantic health of its narrator and a Christmas party that goes awry. It is written in Onegin stanzas, after Pushkin.

...With ancient coins, not legal tender,
And dating back two hundred years
He tries, in vain, to pay for beers.
And with a wistful glint of eye
Remarks to John "That barmaid, Vicky,
She’s always eager for a quickie,
John, why don't you give her a try?
I feel you need a youthful lover
And if not her, why not her brother?"

Ben Borek is a graduate of the creative writing MA at UEA and currently
lives in London.

Illustrated by Matt Croft and Natalie Fernandes at Illustration Zoo

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/arts/openbook/openbook_20071209.shtml

Reviews of Donjong Heights

	20 November 2007
Reviewer: Toby Litt Publication: TimeOut Magazine
Donjong Heights is a tower block in south London. Within it dwells our hero, an unnamed young man who has been told by his doctor, one William Wyatt, that he is definitely going to die. His heart is rapidly slowing down, and cannot be stopped from stopping. And so, before he shuffles off, our hero decides to have a big party (Christmas is handily coming) and invite all the weirdest and wonderfullest residents of Donjong Heights. Critics often maunder on about promise, forgetting that anyone who merits being called 'promising' in such a crowded scene has already achieved quite a lot. Equipped with the kind of verbal chutzpah that Paul Muldoon half-inched from Auden, and Auden nabbed from Byron, Ben Borek has a contemporary flow all his own. At one point he protests 'I know that I'm no Martin Amis', but there's something of London Fields in Borek's mix of the demotic and the hieratic. This is a truly fantastic, and wholly unexpected, London book. Toby Litt: http://www.tobylitt.com/ Toby Litt

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