Inspired by an experience as a trade-union representative, this campus novel might have cost the author his job in academia, but it marks a promising debut in fiction
Those immersed in Not the Booker law and who have closely followed the early stages of this competition will know that the late arrival on our shortlist of Stephen Grant’s A Moment More Sublime was something of a fudge and bodge. While there may have been a few doubts about its strict eligibility, I am at least certain that Grant deserves a break. This novel cost him his job, after all.
A Moment More Sublime was “partly inspired” by Grant’s experiences as a trade-union representative during an industrial dispute at Richmond upon Thames College. As Grant explains it, he was “asked to stop publication” of the novel and was then investigated under the college’s disciplinary procedure. Shortly afterwards, he resigned “due to reasons of ill health and because I had no confidence in the fairness of the process”.
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