Braken Fences, Wolf Kurtoglu’s first novel, has been described as ‘masterful’ (the Blether Region) and ‘the best novel written in Scots in recent times’ (Rab Wilson, Lallans). You can now enjoy listening to this ‘epic tale with believable characters’ in a year long series of exclusive fortnightly podcasts.

We continue our podcast of Wulf Kurtoglu’s novel Braken Fences with the first part of Chapter 5.

The story so far: Beatrice Varshini is returning from a posting deep within the Fundamentalist Zone (FZ), where the Rational World (RW) maintains an old nuclear reactor. She survives an air-crash over the Kunlun Shan mountains, along with Bill Henderson. Beatrice joins a band of brigands, and finds herself an object of interest both to Hsien, a Chinese man who was blinded as a child to accommodate his genetically engineered ability to see heat, and a Neanderthal, Ragoran (Raggle). Bill sets off alone, but is caught and sold into slavery in a Chinese mine.

Beatrice is hopeful that the brigands will rescue him along with their Neanderthal friends. More brigands arrive in the lamasery that they use as a base, including their surgeon, Iqbal, and their fearsome Neanderthal leader, Falad. Raggle tries to find out what Beatrice knows about Neanderthals, and tells her their own version of their past, as if they had stepped out of prehistory, not out of a genetics lab.

A date for your diary: the second part of Chapter 5 will be podcast on 10 January 2013.

Wulf has a blog here where you can find further information about the novel. The novel can be bought here.