VU
by Kenneth Sinclair
Paperback Original £12.95 (ISBN 978-1-7393623-4-8)
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Gabriel, a twentieth century storyteller
Gabriel, a twentieth century storyteller, is abducted while journeying in an unnamed land. He is summoned to narrate to the Princess Scheherazade, who occupies an imaginal world not bounded by time or place. His narration spans more than two thousand years, told over twenty evenings. It’s a many-layered tale, in which poets, painters and players jostle with explorers, sages, and scientists, hurtling towards the silver screen and the apprehension of string theory. The last word is given to the birds, who fly through the narrative, calling us to attend to them and to the natural world in which, and against which, all human striving takes place.
VU is an experimental fiction
VU is an experimental fiction. A novel from a writer who previously wrote plays and was looking for a way to gather together the riches of a lifetime of reading.
A princess reclines on her juniper couch. A captive storyteller muses in his cell, recalling scenes from Hampstead and Wiltshire, and waiting to be conducted to his captor’s apartment by a torch-bearing guide. From time to time he meets the old storyteller, seated beneath a palm tree, fingering prayer beads. They exchange words about freedom and captivity, a theme threaded through the narrative.
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Read an excerpt from Chapter XX of VU.
The author
Kenneth Sinclair was born in Scotland. His plays have been performed in Cambridge and Hampstead, and on the BBC. His collection of poetry, A Breath Taken, was published in 2021.
Kenneth Sinclair is the writing name of Kenneth Angus Macdonald, born in Ayr on 23 August 1941 to William Macdonald and Edith, née Aberdein; died in Aldbourne, Wiltshire on 25 February 2026.
Plays
The Private Secretary (BBC Radio 4)
Blue Skies (Pentameters, Hampstead)
Candles in the Night (ADC Theatre, Cambridge)
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A 1974 review of Blue Skies appeared in the Express and News (forerunner of the Ham and High). Matthew Lewin described the drama as, “a penetrating and amusing play about the hopes, dreams and suddenly-changing fortunes of new and established staff of a large company… The play very effectively lashes out at the petty rules and pompous regulations which large companies tend to generate within themselves. People find security in obeying policies and rules which they have themselves created – and it only takes a few minor upsets to knock the whole delicately balanced mechanism out of alignment.”
The ADC Theatre programme describes the Candles in the Night production as, “a move towards a more fluid, emblematic presentation, free from the inhibitions and limitations of naturalistic stage technique.”
Sinclair pushed his dramatic endeavours to the limit with an ambitious piece that includes, first, a meeting between the fictional Baron de Charlus and Leopold Bloom, followed by that of their authors, Proust and Joyce. In a personal letter, Harold Pinter wrote to him in 1980, “The play is clearly a highly ambitious piece of work. I think it is in the main part beautifully written, with elegance and wit and, as you suspected, I was intrigued by what you were setting out to do.”
However, unable to find a way to fully realise this work, Sinclair turned from theatre and started working on VU. First conceived during the prolonged Post Office strike of 1988, it underwent many revisions before Gillian Paschkes-Bell began to work with Sinclair, as his editor. VU emerges from years of extensive reading and Sinclair’s deep interest in the arts and popular culture. It brings together images in words that drift, as one reader put it, like clouds across the imagination.
Kenneth Sinclair's life is revealed through his poetry collection, A Breath Taken, which was published by Wordcatcher in 2022.
