Porcupine
By Nick Holdstock
Porcupine recreates the first meeting of pioneering art historian and Renaissance scholar Aby Warburg and philosopher Ernst Cassirer in a Swiss asylum in 1924. Warburg’s mounting fears of political and social collapse and the rise of anti-Semitism during the aftermath of the First World War had fueled a psychotic break that led to his confinement. He sees enemies everywhere, railing against philistines, modern technology, the city of Hamburg, Martin Luther, and Switzerland. As the two men walk in loops through the institution gardens, Warburg, desperate to convince Cassirer of his sanity, struggles between psychosis and a feverish attempt to lucidly convey his core ideas—to talk his way out of a cage of his own making.
In 2024, Porcupine was shortlisted for The Novel Prize.
Nick Holdstock is the author of two novels, The Casualties (St Martins, 2015) and Quarantine (Swift, 2022), and a short story collection, The False River (Unthank, 2019). He has written three non-fiction books about China: The Tree That Bleeds (Luath, 2012), Chasing the Chinese Dream (IB Tauris, 2017) and China’s Forgotten People (Bloomsbury, 2019).