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.

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). Raggle’s version of their past is told as if they had stepped out of prehistory, not out of a genetics lab.

Bill sets off alone, but is caught and sold into slavery in a mine. The slaves are rescued by the brigands. In an abandoned village, there is a fire, and a lorry blows up. Hsien is unwell with the effects of the fire. Kamile, the Uigher woman who leads the brigands, knocks him out with liquor and makes Beatrice stay with him. Hsien has no memory of that night, but later, in a Tibetan refugee lamasery, Beatrice finds she’s expecting.

To Bill’s consternation, Raggle warns him off his little sister Derriakin (Derry), but it turns out that Derry is using Bill as a smokescreen – she has a thing with a Tibetan lad. When the lad appears at the lamasery, he brings a wanted poster with Hsien’s name on it – a belated consequence of Hsien helping two boys, the sons of the mining engineer, to escape when the brigands attacked the mine. Falad, the leader of the Neanderthals, is furious. Hsien gets flung out of the band of brigands. Beatrice, Bill, Hsien’s sidekick Iskander, and the healer Guzul stay with him at a lamasery when the others leave.

Despairing of ever getting back to the RW, Bill takes to distilling spirits, and frets about what has happened to Nusiret. Nusiret was another slave in the mine, a Uigher girl in disguise as a man. She is part of a conspiracy to spread a contraceptive weed among women oppressed by fundamentalism.

Back in Delhi, Beatrice’s grandfather, thinking she’s dead, has been persuaded by Guangwu Bang’s shady Tibetan refugee network to donate her identity to his protegée Rongye, an illegal Tibetan immigrant.

A date for your diary:  Chapter 9 will be podcast on 25 April 2013.

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