U Want It Darker

A true artist transforms suffering into beauty. But sometimes, all you've got is the suffering. . .

U Want It Darker is a bold and darkly humorous short story collection about artists struggling with their egos, facing their failures and redeeming their bad behaviour.

With each exhilarating tale, Murray Middleton draws us deeper into the absurdities of creative life, inhabiting dingy painters' studios, anarchic movie sets, depraved pizza restaurants and grimy comedy clubs, as he tries not to plunge into the abyss himself.

Daring, original and shot through with pathos, these stories are a gulp of fresh air from a Vogel Award-winning literary talent.

About the Author

Murray Middleton considers himself uniquely qualified to write about the struggles of artists. He is a failed drummer. He has made short films that have been roundly rejected at festivals at home and abroad. He painted theatre sets for a decade, on and off, without exhibiting a bristle of aesthetic flair. Stand-up comedy has even been attempted. Miraculously, Murray has enjoyed some success as a writer, including winning a major Australian literary award. But he later passed a fellow winner of the award, several years his senior, in the confectionary aisle of a supermarket and noticed that they were wearing the same pair of purple Kmart shorts. In the moment, Murray understood that creative despair would always be his.