For Those Who Come After

When I met you I was preparing to die... Deep in the savage chaos of the Spanish Civil War a poet searches for answers to what he calls his 'conversation with God'. Another poet searches simply for revenge. Decades later, a biographer in search of a key to unlocking an enigma, comes across a manuscript locked away in an old London mansion house, revealing a history of violence, duty and one man's struggle to find his place in time. The story told by aged hermit billionaire Hal Buren, scratching out the testament of his life in the dim light of his childhood home, is dominated by the disappearance of his brother almost fifty years before. Buren spends his life trying to protect his domineering mother, Matilda, and his sister's wife, Bess, from the corrosive truth, a truth that ends up rotting Buren himself. As the story develops a question grows: what can we trust to learn from our history? A novel that spans the twentieth century and introduces a litany of unforgettable characters, For Those Who Come After is a study in myth-making, of familial bonds, and the destructive tides of enduring love.

Gary Raymond is from Newport in South Wales. He writes on a wide range of subjects from literature to film to current affairs, is editor of Wales Arts Review, and is a university lecturer in English and Creative Writing.