States of man : new stories

Tender, nostalgic, romantic, funny, absurd, magically real, speculative, ironic, nightmarish, entertaining and elegantly rendered...these stories span a century of Man's consciousness. Once, a man might be a Gatsby chasing his girl half-way around the world, the captain of a football World Cup winning side, a raging Picasso bull in a mythical maze refusing to yield lover or art till his last mortality-defiant egotistic gasp.

Straightforward enough choices, dreams, behaviour. Suddenly he is man interrupted, underwhelmed, overworked, ridiculed, young, rock-solid or unreliable family man, father, husband, friend; his freedom evaporates: he's globe-trotting inbox-fatigued nonsense-hearing corporate, military civil-serving quiet ministry of Everyman.

He's so exasperated he might just run away and prop up a bar, or contemplate mild treachery just to get by, and he's put-upon, as he zigzags across #TimesUp, political correctness, game theory, oh... and... the women in his life. Now here he stands staring down the barrel of the 21st Century - he's superman, he's transhuman, he's disassembling, he's nearly done for...or is he?