Two New Works from Richard Craven Expand the Bristolian Chronicles

Odour Issues and The Senseless Counterfeit—the third and fourth volumes in Richard Craven’s genre-defying Bristolian Chronicles—are now available in paperback and Kindle editions.

These latest instalments continue Craven’s bold literary experiment: to drag the grandeur of classical form through the detritus of contemporary Bristol, exposing what is grotesque, sublime, and farcical in equal measure.

About the New Titles
In Odour Issues, Craven turns his lens on Lord Snatch, a squattocratic Odysseus figure, whose journey through a defiled and declining city is anything but heroic. Drawing freely on Homeric structure while gleefully rejecting its redemptive arc, the novel trades mythic gods for ideological grifters, sirens for social workers, and sacred trials for bureaucratic indignities. This is a Bristol of municipal decrepitude and crumbling delusion, where the hero’s longing is not for home, but perhaps for an end to the stench.

By contrast, The Senseless Counterfeit offers a full-length Jacobean revenge tragedy for the stage. It is an orgy of retribution, deception, and baroque excess—anchored by Squalor, a cider-swilling chorus of the grotesque. Craven draws upon the theatrical language of Jacobean drama and Restoration farce to tell a tale of double-crossed libertines, tantric con-artists, gimps, ghosts, and ketamine peddlers. If Odour Issues maps the aftermath of decay, The Senseless Counterfeit revels in its theatrical performance.

The Bristolian Chronicles
From the genital blight of Amoeba Dick to the ketamine-induced fall of Pretty Poli, the Bristolian Chronicles describe a city in perpetual collapse. Across four loosely connected volumes—each one playing with form and tone—Craven has constructed a parallel literary Bristol: absurd, deranged, and unnervingly familiar.

These books do not ask to be liked. They demand to be confronted. Their characters, settings, and even their punctuation groan under the weight of bodily, civic, and linguistic breakdown. And yet, through this aesthetic of abjection, Craven conjures something remarkable: a coherent satire that draws equally from Aristophanes, Swift, and the local council’s planning department.

About the Author
Richard Craven is a British-Canadian writer and former academic philosopher. Based in Bristol for the past twenty years, he has turned away from conventional literary realism to create a body of work that is formally virtuosic, politically unruly, and profoundly irreverent. His writing draws on classical structure, theatrical tradition, and a deep disdain for modern sanctimony. Each book is composed with a scholar’s ear and a disconcertingly conservative saboteur’s grin.

For interviews, features, review copies or event bookings, please contact:
Jacob Bettany
Email: jacob@nicheclever.co.uk

Further information and supplementary materials can be found at www.richardcraven.uk

The Bristolian Chronicles (So Far):

Amoeba Dick: Or, A New Tale of a Tub
https://amzn.to/4kMs0DX
A bathhouse allegory of bacterial vengeance and bureaucratic psychosis.

Pretty Poli: Or, Monsieur Perroquet’s Descent from a High Perch
https://amzn.to/43ZFMO2
A parrot architect’s hallucinatory ascent to Bristol’s mayoralty and beyond.

The Senseless Counterfeit: An Idle Frippery or Play
https://amzn.to/3FHlGyM
A revenge tragedy in verse featuring gimps, gurus, ghosts, and grime.

Odour Issues: A Novel
https://amzn.to/3HnRh99
A post-Odyssean nightmare of squattocrats, scent-based trauma, and ritualised decay.

Series page: https://amzn.to/4kKHKaC