The Red Bird is the latest work of speculative fiction by John Fraser of whom the distinguished poet and Booker Prize nominee John Fuller has recently written: ‘I am convinced that he is the most original novelist of our time. His work has become an internal dialogue of intuitions and counter-intuitions that just happens to take the form of conversations between inscrutable characters. But really it is a rich texture of poetic perceptions, frequently reaching for the aphoristic, but rooted in sidelong debate and weird analogies.’ In The Red Bird a group of associates, some close, some distant - all habitues of a New York pub The Empty Room - decide to leave the States to try an experiment in the Sahel. Prompted by economic and sentimental interests, and by curiosity and ignorance, and having set up a trading post and motel in the desert, their friendships begin to fall dramatically apart in a quest for power, and murder ensues…