U Want It Darker by Murray Middleton, Unknown Author

A true artist transforms suffering into beauty. But sometimes, all you've got is the suffering. . .

U Want It Darker is a bold and darkly humorous short story collection about artists struggling with their egos, facing their failures and redeeming their bad behaviour.

With each exhilarating tale, Murray Middleton draws us deeper into the absurdities of creative life, inhabiting dingy painters' studios, anarchic movie sets, depraved pizza restaurants and grimy comedy clubs, as he tries not to plunge into the abyss himself.

Daring, original and shot through with pathos, these stories are a gulp of fresh air from a Vogel Award-winning literary talent.

Praise for U Want it Darker

'Beautifully observed through an idiosyncratic and witty lens, these stories are beguilingly strange and deeply human adventures into the getting of wisdom.' - JOANNA MURRAY-SMITH

'The odds are so stacked against any creative work that it's a wonder this book exists at all. Middleton's portraits of struggling artists are uncomfortably familiar, bitterly funny, and cut with honest truth.' - JENNIFER MILLS