Where Nothing Sleeps Volume One

Book excerpt: The first volume of Denton Welch’s complete collected short works English novelist Denton Welch originally trained as a visual artist, and a painterly perspicacity and talent for human observation are evident in his writing. His close attention to detail renders even the most seemingly mundane trivialities memorable and important. Though he died at the young age of thirty-three, Welch was quite prolific, doing most of his writing while bedridden after a bicycling accident that left him seriously injured. He produced three novels, over seventy-five short stories, and a journal that ran over two hundred fifty thousand words long. Included in this volume are autobiographical works inspired by Welch’s youth in China, such as “I Can Remember” and “The Coffin on the Hill.” “I First Began to Write” is a brief vignette detailing Welch’s early efforts as an author. These stories, fragments, and poems reveal a writer gifted with superb powers of description.