In the Press
"Distortion could be the most daringly original and breathtakingly powerful work of literary fiction to emerge in recent years. Highly recommended."
“A literary masterpiece of restraint and intimacy that breaks down barriers to reconnect readers with the vulnerable mind and beating heart of humanity."
“Let's face it, literary fiction can be pretentious, impenetrable, and hard to read. But Distortion is none of those things - it's literary fiction without the smug factor. In fact, it could be a game changer in this genre."
Chris Riches,
DAILY EXPRESS
Richard Moriarty,
THE SUN
Jonathan Ward,
DAILY STAR SUNDAY
FEATURES AND INTERVIEWS:
The Big Picture
More on what I am trying to do with my writing
PSYCHOLOGICAL FICTION
I see psychological fiction focussing more on the thoughts, feelings, emotions and motivations of the characters than the external elements. I focus on the interior as a way to highlight the human condition. So far, I have eliminated any exterior aspects ...
THE USE OF DIALOGUE ONLY
Dialogue represents a conversation between two or more characters. It moves the story forward. By stripping out the exteriority (descriptions of time, place and person) it leaves the interior to be expressed through dialogic means rather the conveying it, for example ...
PORTABILITY
I hope to offer the reader a relationship to ‘what’ is being said, both in terms of the psychological and emotional, and not the context (i.e. the physical environment) it is said in. For books that describe Africa remain in Africa by their ambience. Books that ...
NARRATIVE VOICE
I wanted to obliterate the narrative voice in The Malady of Love by having the same voice for both the characters. Ideally the single point of differentiation I wanted was to be in the ‘what’ that was being said between the characters: one person’s story being different from another’s ...
Author
Sierra Ernesto Xavier is a writer of innovative fiction focussing on the theme of angst and anxiety. He is the author of Humanity’s Rage, The Malady of Love and Distortion.
He became an avid reader once he left school having encountered fiction that appealed to him which was not on any curriculum. His imagination was stimulated upon reading Homer’s Odyssey and Ovid’s Metamorphosis, which were in contrast to the texts that he was required to read in school. With an interest in the Classics, he became submerged in literature, enjoying the different styles of writing over the centuries and began writing as a hobby.
His reading of fiction came to a standstill once he encountered the writings of Samuel Beckett and Marguerite Duras. The harshness and bleakness of Beckett’s writing and the haunting beauty of Duras’s style left an indelible impression upon him that characterises some of his writing.
Sierra graduated in Applied Psychology, trained as an Existential Counsellor and lives in London.