Lara Pawson's Spent Light is an experimental work of literary nonfiction tracing the relationships between private experience and political violence.

To do so, Pawson constructs a series of associative passages in which ordinary domestic things become entry points into histories of colonialism, war, exploitation and displacement. A vase of dead cornflowers leads to an elderly relative, a pair of gloves, a murder in St Petersburg and an encounter with a stranger. Elsewhere, a ceramic tile opens onto the American Civil War, Cape Town and the histories of slavery connecting different continents.

These movements are central to Pawson's method: the apparently insignificant is never entirely separate from the enormous, and the past continually intrudes upon the present. The writing is intimate, digressive and sometimes unsettling, attentive to the strange persistence of objects and the ways historical knowledge alters what we see in front of us.

Edition/Condition: CB editions, 2024. First UK edition, paperback. Very good condition, with minimal visible wear to the covers and clean, unmarked interior pages.