Our Struggle

Paul, ex-tube driver and drinking partner of legendary Union leader Bob Crowe turns up at Essex University in the early 1980s haunted by the death of his colleague on the tracks. Thrown into the radical mix of Student Union life and the academic intoxication of post-modern theory taught by the likes of Ernesto Laclau, Jaques Derrida and a very young Slavoj Zizek, Paul befriends the novel’s unnamed narrator. What follows is a riotous attempt to put the 20th Century to bed, as seen through the eyes of the foot soldiers of British history. From Miners strikes to IRA collection buckets, ANC demonstrations and some very dodgy handling of Soviet money, Our Struggle climaxes with a devastating denouement in modern day Kurdistan. Holloway’s epic tale asks the big questions, does what we think, what we say and what we do ever match up or are we destined to fall short of the ideals we think we cherish?