Subscript (Poetry Pleiade) - Softcover

We are inside a pre-biotic chemical reaction some 4,500 million years ago, as it suddenly forms a membrane and becomes a prokaryot cell. Then a eukaryot cell. Then a multicellular organism. That's for the first chapter, and from the cell's viewpoint. Christine Brooke-Rose blends her unique and well-developed narratorless technique with a drastic extension of a very ancient convention, that of lending words to creatures that have none, indeed have no consciousness, to move steadily through evolution to the present day.

Christine Brooke-Rose was born in Geneva and educated at Somerville College, Oxford and University College, London. She taught at the University of Paris, Vincennes, from 1968 to 1988 and lived for many years in the south of France. Carcanet publish her novels Amalgamemnon, Xorandor, Verbivore and Textermination and her earlier novels Out, Such, Between and Thru in the Brooke-Rose Omnibus. Also available is her autobiographical work, Remake (1996). She died on 21 March 2012.