MARCH 2018: Nick Ashton-Jones is a writer of literary fiction and environmental non-fiction. Between January 2006 and January 2018 he project managed, as an interested party, the establishment of a community based mixed farm in the Niger Valley of Nigeria. He divided his time between the UK and Nigeria. Now, into his sixties, and the prime aims of the project having been achieved, he has passed most of his responsibilities onto others, in order to focus more time on writing and publishing. This is, at any rate, his intention for the next six months . . .
Contact me now.
Contact me now.
ANNU, published 2014
Love and hate occupy the same space in the mind but, through adversity, love triumphs. Annu is our humanity.
See Fiction. Purchase by Amazon or AbeBooks.
Love and hate occupy the same space in the mind but, through adversity, love triumphs. Annu is our humanity.
See Fiction. Purchase by Amazon or AbeBooks.
Books People Discard, published 2013
Bad behaviour on a run-down plantation in New Sudan has devastating consequences for a privileged London family sixteen years later. Illicit love and cannibalism.
See Fiction. Purchase by Amazon or Abebooks.
Bad behaviour on a run-down plantation in New Sudan has devastating consequences for a privileged London family sixteen years later. Illicit love and cannibalism.
See Fiction. Purchase by Amazon or Abebooks.
The Possible Estate, published 2015
The cycle of generations on a Pacific island, from Victorian missionary to bum planter. The colonial adventure gone shockingly wrong.
See Fiction. Purchase by Amazon or Abebooks.
The cycle of generations on a Pacific island, from Victorian missionary to bum planter. The colonial adventure gone shockingly wrong.
See Fiction. Purchase by Amazon or Abebooks.
The Last Fishermen, completed 2016
The final novel of the South Pacific Quartet. The story of a determined misfit who runs a plantation on Tivu, the home of a community so defiantly misanthropic (the fishermen of the title) that the arrival of a stranger results in murder and suicide. The entry of a beloved son brings optimism and a happy ending. The novel contains a novella, Bravery, which will be published in advance. See below.
The final novel of the South Pacific Quartet. The story of a determined misfit who runs a plantation on Tivu, the home of a community so defiantly misanthropic (the fishermen of the title) that the arrival of a stranger results in murder and suicide. The entry of a beloved son brings optimism and a happy ending. The novel contains a novella, Bravery, which will be published in advance. See below.
Bravery, published December 2017
The possibilities of youth made available to a beloved son when he leaves his island home to pursue his education on the neighbouring continent. The eccentric and wonderful people he encounters change his life as much as he changes theirs so that he is able to return home and deal optimistically with his father's suicide. A novella of 18,000 words. Read it here.
The possibilities of youth made available to a beloved son when he leaves his island home to pursue his education on the neighbouring continent. The eccentric and wonderful people he encounters change his life as much as he changes theirs so that he is able to return home and deal optimistically with his father's suicide. A novella of 18,000 words. Read it here.
Memories of Wickhamstead Park, revised and completed 2016
The prosaic London suburb is not what it seems. History has a way of surprisingly defining the present, not always conveniently or comfortably.
A short novel I drafted during a hot afternoon in a Nigeria forest twenty years ago. Read a short story based on a sample chapter here: Romany
The prosaic London suburb is not what it seems. History has a way of surprisingly defining the present, not always conveniently or comfortably.
A short novel I drafted during a hot afternoon in a Nigeria forest twenty years ago. Read a short story based on a sample chapter here: Romany
Landscape, Power and Dispossession: After more than a decade of research, I finally drafted the idea of a book in 24 chapters during February 2017, anticipating something like ten chapters in twelve months. Landscape, Power and Dispossession asserts that the current human condition arises from a peculiarly English version of feudalism that evolved in Britain after the Norman conquest, and which subsequently transmogrified into capitalism based upon the ownership of land. This set the foundation for an industrial revolution characterized by the diminution of workers to units of production and their incarceration inside unsanitary towns, and upon a spurious right of the capitalist to exploit all resources without limit. This has proved a disaster for the health of humanity and for the happiness of the individual. The deplorable condition is manifested in the human landscape (that involves, in the 21st century, the global biosphere) which expresses the power of the few and the dispossession of the many. I describe the evolution of this human landscape with special reference to Britain and to the successor states of the early and later British empires in five parts, each one based upon the five powerful forces that drive landscape formation: Humanity, Feudalism, Capitalism, Industrialization, and Individualism. To date I have completed Parts I and II.