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This Machine Feeds

‘One of the most important new voices in fiction’ Alan Moore, author of Watchmen

Heather, a young performance artist with middling talent but flawless instincts for self-promotion, becomes an emblem of our times. As she prepares a work that promises ultimate revelation, her sense of the real begins to disintegrate.

By smashing apart the circuit board of late-capitalist life, we can now, at last, witness our ecosystem of surveillance and exploitation. In the sparking cables and blinking lights, we see clearly the humming madness beneath the surface of every image. And the violence of a world that insists on value in constant visibility.

Taking its reader on a cultural hell-ride – from reenactments of JFK’s assassination to cherished friends that turn into pillars of salt – This Machine Feeds answers the question that howls in all of our chests: how can I be sane in insane times?

This Machine Feeds is a reminder that fiction, at its best, can render the world such that it can be properly seen – in all of its deranging horror and terrifying possibilities. A work of serious political and ethical range that captures the vertiginous, unnerving feeling that comes with being alive now – forced to bear witness to the unholy end-times alliance of messianic militarism, rapacious necrocapitalism and technofascist idiocy. (It’s also quite a fun book).

Keiran Goddard, author of I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning

About Heather Parry

Heather Parry is a writer of fiction and non-fiction. Her books have been long- and shortlisted for the Saltire Society Fiction Book of the Year award, the Polari First Book Prize and the Bread and Roses Award for Radical Publishing. In 2025 The Skinny named her as one of the ‘Next Generation of Scottish Writers’. She writes the Substack general observations on eggs, and lives in Glasgow with her partner and their cats, Fidel and Ernesto.
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Details
  • Imprint: Doubleday
  • ISBN: 9781529938715
  • Length: 240 pages
  • Price: £16.99
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