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Flower Factory

by Richard Foster - £11.99  Ortac Press (2022)
paperback    ISBN 13: 9781838388713 | ISBN 10: 1838388710

Freedom of Movement wasn’t always an alien concept to the British. Flower Factory tells of an English seasonal worker going to live and work in the Netherlands at the turn of the millennium. These psyched-out remembrances are set in the Bollenstreek of South Holland, an area that produces flower bulbs by the billion. Casual workers from all over Europe created their own ecosystem of squats, parties and alternative living practices around the working seasons, raving hard and living for the weekly pay packet. In the year 2000 it seemed nothing would change in this free-and-easy land, but the narrator witnessed the last beating of the 24 Hour Party drum.
 
Featuring original line illustrations by the author, this surreally comic and immersive novel is a dreamlike snapshot of life in Europe just two decades ago: the book shines a lurid light on a world that's difficult to recognise today.
 
Cover art by Viktor Hachmang.
 
‘This book is an important slice of social and cultural history ... Richard Foster is the greatest thing to come out of Accrington since the construction of the M66.' John Doran - The Quietus
 
'England’s least conformist culture writer serves up an anti-memoir of a brief - previously untold - moment in Great Britain’s shared double Dutch history. Millennium, immigration, utopia, work, weirdness - and barely a tulip in sight.' Fergal Kinney - The Guardian, The Face

(Price & availability last checked: July 2022)