Books
The Eagle and the Cockerel
A story based on true historical facts that They don’t want people to know
Within
Twenty generations ago, the Sun burnt the Earth. Men have been walled in ever since. Until a kid finds the truth.
I’ve rarely read such witty political fiction with so much heart and flair! It’s at once both absurdist and glaringly realistic, not to be missed.
Leena Norms, British poet and writer
At once of the recent past and of the moment, Alan Rhode’s The Eagle and the Cockerel is a meaty political thriller served in a distinctively wry style. Brilliantly comic on personality politics, and sharp on big picture politics, political comms, AI, and social media, The Eagle and the Cockerel exposes the absurdities of political games and power play in all their treachery, arrogance and self-serving cronyism.
The Eagle and the Cockerel
Europe. Great Britain has long-since left the Union, but tensions between European countries remain and the international balance of power is firmly weighted towards China and the US.
Alan Rhode has woven an entertaining tale about where politics and a digital world might take the European Union in the future as it struggles to find unity and purpose in the face of the looming threats to economics, the environment and democracy that lurk in all countries across the continent.
Joe Kirwin, journalist
Within
In a world where sunlight is forbidden and truth is heresy, one young man’s curiosity will either liberate humanity – or destroy everything he loves.
For twenty generations, humanity has hidden in viewless corridors, told that the Sun above has burned all life from the Earth. Boz has never questioned the Tenets that govern every aspect of their existence – until he meets Mozart the Heretic, whose disfigured face tells a different story about what really happened to those who sought the truth.
When Mozart reveals that the surface world still thrives in secret paradise, Boz faces an impossible choice: remain safely ignorant in his prison, or risk everything to discover what lies beyond the forbidden exits. Driven by his love for Flox, a remarkable young woman from the violent outer corridors, Boz embarks on a perilous journey through pitch-black tunnels toward the mythical ‘Land of Without’ for a mission as yet unknown to him.
What he finds shatters everything he believed. The surface world is not only habitable but beautiful – a garden paradise where the privileged few enjoy nature’s bounty while millions remain trapped below in ignorance. But when Boz learns the true, appalling content of his mission outside, he must choose between the liberation of his people and the virginity of his own conscience. In a world where every freedom demands a sacrifice, how do you choose between love and justice – especially when you’re no longer sure which is which?