Running with the blood god

Troubled by a growing sense that life's vastness is shrinking as the physical and imaginative limits of our crowded, polluted, late-in-the-day civilisation close in, Matthew Thompson roams the world seeking out those who would force the horizons back - the mavericks. In doing so, he hits the streets to explore the agony of totalitarianism in Iran, the delusional wretchedness and inbred colonial passivism of the Philippines and the historical rubble of Serbia, as well as what happens in Portland, Oregon: his own father's home town and hub of modern American anarchism. Running with the Blood God is a hell-raising ride which leaves his My Colombian Death shaking in its wake. In this incredible work of reportage, written with the pace of a thriller, Thompson walks the line where the liberty of individuality is often a matter of life or death.