130 x 195mm, 160 pages, Black & white printing, Perfect bound, Softcover, 2017

Merced Es Benz is an account of a dysfunctional love affair, narrated via SMS, email, Facebook and Google search results. Events unfold against a backdrop of a barely-credible pre-Olympic London where Bow E3’s high-rises are no longer the Ends and east London’s awful art parties, populated by the debased progeny of the rich and famous, do little to dispel 90s rave nostalgia. Remnants of a ‘virtual’ conversation act as a body of circumstantial evidence, betraying a ‘real’ intimacy behind a messy social media scandal that spilled into tabloid coverage.

Iphgenia Baal’s non-fiction novel balances at the jarring intersection of death, mourning and Facebook, as downward mobility proves to be a more intoxicating – if less fatal – drug than heroin. It is published as part of the Semina series, commissioned and edited by Stewart Home, that also featured books by Bridget Penney, Jarett Kobek, Katrina Palmer, Jana Leo and Mark Waugh, as well as Stewart Home himself.

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