To celebrate the imminent release of Iain Sinclair‘s AMERICAN SMOKE, the author is going on a book tour. Starting on October 12th, Iain has a number of events in his diary all the way through to January 2014. Here is the book’s synopsis…

Completing the trilogy begun with HACKNEY, THAT ROSE-RED EMPIRE and continued with GHOST MILK, Iain Sinclair breaks for the border with AMERICAN SMOKE, his first full engagement with the memory-filled landscapes of the American Beats and their fellow travellers, echoed as always in the mythologies of London, through which so many of them also passed.

In a book filled with bad journeys and fated decisions, this is an epic walk in the footsteps of Malcolm Lowry, Charles Olson, Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs, Gary Snyder and more, heated by obsession (the Old West, volcanoes, Mexico) and enlivened by false memories, broken reports and strange adventures.

With AMERICAN SMOKE, Sinclair confirms his place as the most innovative of our chroniclers of the contemporary.

AMERICAN SMOKE is due to be published in the UK on November 2013 (Hamish Hamilton) and in the US in April 2014 (Farrar Strauss) . Below you will find information (including links, where available) for the events. Some of the finer details are yet to be confirmed, so be sure to confirm with the venues:

Saturday October 12^th

• Event:  Durham Book Festival
• Time:  7.00pm
• Venue:  St. Chad’s College Chapel, 18 North Bailey, Durham City, County Durham DH1 3RH

Friday October 18^th

• Event:  Manchester Literature Festival
• Time:  5.30pm
• Venue:  International Anthony Burgess Foundation, The Engine House, Chorlton Mill, 3 Cambridge Street, Manchester M1 5BY

Saturday October 19^th

• Event:  Bloomsbury Festival
• Time:  5.00pm
• Venue:  Senate House, London, Greater London WC1E

Sunday October 27^th

• Event:  The Beat Generation/The Rest is Noise Festival
• Time:  10.30am
• Venue:  South Bank Centre

Wednesday November 6^th

• Event:  Royal Society of Literature, chaired by Deborah Moggach
• Time:  7.00pm
• Venue:  Courtauld Institute of Art, Somerset House, Strand, London, WC2R 0RN

Thursday November 7th

• Event:  Iain Sinclair and Gary Walkow present Beat – part of the London film season Iain Sinclair 70 x 70
• Time:  6.45pm
• Venue:  Zilkha Auditorium, Whitechapel Gallery, 77-82 Whitechapel High St, London E1 7QX

Friday November 8^th

• Event:  LAUNCH of American Smoke, in association with the 70×70 film series.  Screenings of Nostalgia for the Light (2010), dir. Patricio Guzman, and Tornado (2000-2010), dir. Francis Alys.
• Time:  7.00pm
• Venue:  Sea Cadets building, 110 Stoke Newington Church Street, London N16 0JX

Wednesday November 20^th

• Event:  Film event
• Time: TBC
• Venue:  ICA, The Mall, London SW1Y 5AH

Thursday November 21^st

• Venue:  LRB Bookshop, 14 Bury Place, London WC1A 2JL

Thursday November 28^th

• Event:  Topping and Company Bath
• Time:  8.00pm
• Venue:  Topping and Company Booksellers Bath, The Paragon, Bath BA1 5LS

Wednesday December 4th

• Event:  Broadway Bookshop event
• Time: TBC
• Venue:  The Broadway Bookshop, 6 Broadway Market, Hackney, London E8 4QJ

Wednesday January 8th

• Venue:  Central St Martins