Wreck

NEW COVER TO BE REVEALED © Kiran Millwood Hargrave

tom de freston

is a visual artist based in Oxford, and the co-author of two novels with his wife, Kiran Milwood Hargrave. Wreck is his debut non-fiction work.

A Story of Art and Survival

Tom de Freston

An artist’s intensely personal reckoning that delves deep inside the making of art, and explores the value of facing, and depicting, the darkest of horrors.

When Tom de Freston began making artworks with Ali, a survivor of the Syrian war, he was drawn obsessively to Géricault's monumental painting, The Raft of the Medusa. Its depiction of suffering and redemption resonated powerfully with Ali’s story, as well as de Freston’s own experiences. Charting the magnetic frisson that runs between artist and subject, past masterpiece and contemporary artistic endeavour, Wreck is a startling and revelatory dive into violence, fear, trauma – and the hope that emerges with survival.

‘[Wreck] is sui generis, a brilliant, rolling, roiling, turbulent stramash of stories, histories, tones and tellings’ Robert Macfarlane

‘A stupendous work’ Philip Hoare

MEMOIR / HISTORY OF ART £9.99 March B format 198 × 129mm PB 352pp No Canada rights Serial rights 978 1 78378 665 7