Kester Brewin

'Hugely accomplished' - Lucy Morris, Curtis Brown'An exceptionally talented writer' - Emma Finn, Conville & Walsh'Brilliantly depicts the emotional knife-edge on which a teacher and her classes rest' - The Literary ConsultancyShe wasn't allowed to bury her mother. Now she must attempt to resurrect her career. It is September of 2020, and a young English teacher must return to in-person teaching to face the child she tore into just as lockdown was hitting. She has spent months in virtual isolation, unable to attend her mother's funeral and wondering how she will find a way back to restoring her reputation. Her answer is Charles Dickens: as this class of children from a West London estate face examinations, she will teach them Great Expectations. Yet nothing will be quite as simple as she hopes. Unflinching, irreverent and ultimately hopeful, Middle Class is a searing insight into the complex theatre of a London comprehensive and a stunning examination of education and social mobility in modern Britain from one of its most exciting new writers.

Magic, super-powers, contact with the beyond - digging down beneath these stories uncovers an extraordinary pattern: it is only in the renunciation of such 'potent arts' that a hero's true humanity is revealed. Journeying from Shakespeare's plays through novels and films and deep into the human condition, After Magic presents a startling challenge to a world still tied up with toxic religion to discover what lies in a life lived beyond the infinite demand of 'super-nature.'

My gratitude to Kester Brewin for raising so helpfully the questions we must address if the aspiration of Mission Shaped Church is to go beyond rhetoric.' Richard Chartres, Bishop of London.