The Night Wages, 2nd Edition is a leap into the mysteries, a deep conversation between father and daughter, a ragged travelogue of a night sea journey to the temple of Aphrodite. It’s a rumination on how we handle the volatility of romantic love, and how a parent communicates through stories a grief he cannot communicate any other way.

Swiftly  awarded cult status amongst Shaw’s readership, The Night Wages is a book for both lovers and grievers. The book is cherished as a unique articulation of love’s deepest Underworld, Tony Hoagland claiming, “My jaw dropped, and is still dropped.” This is a classic of contemporary romanticism.

It’s a rumination on how we handle the volatility of romantic love, and how a parent communicates through stories a grief he cannot speak of any other way. Personal and yet mythical, poetic but earthy, this is a new form. The Night Wages provokes archaic images and modern dilemmas, it is the story of someone trying to comprehend the mysteries of their own heart.

The Night Wages by Martin Shaw, available from Cista Mystica Press (2019, 2020).

Praise for The Night Wages

“No other writer since Ted Hughes could even have imagined writing this book.” —Mark Wormald, director of studies for English, Pembroke College, Cambridge

“Martin Shaw is a modern-day bard.” —Madeline Miller, author of Circe and winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction

“Mysterious, haunting… searing mythic intelligence.” —Kathleen Lee, author of All Things Tending Towards the Eternal

“It’s Shakespearian. Pin-drop wonder.” —John Densmore, The Doors

“He channels story through rapture.” —Tony Hoagland, author of The Art of Voice

“A raft of magical stories that may just save our lives.” —Timothy Liu, author of Don’t Go Back to Sleep

“The Night Wages is Shaw at his vanquished best. A credible medicine man takes the dust of what couldn’t last into his hands, flings it up into the light.” —Stephen Jenkinson, author of Come of Age: The Case for Elderhood in a Time of Trouble