‘The Tramp’ + bookmark + ‘The Tramp: the music of Robert Aitken’

Description

The Tramp novel’s back cover blurb:

“London, 1989: On the verge of musical recognition, tragedy tears Robert Aitken’s world apart. He turns his back on the city, the industry and the people he loves; walking away with little more than two guitars, a hat in a box and ‘the beast’ shadowing his every move.

Over twenty years later, two ex-London music lovers have relocated to Australia. In an unlikely quirk of fate, they stumble upon a man bearing a nagging resemblance to the one who had vanished from London all those years ago, reluctantly performing to a few indifferent locals in a ramshackle pub in Tasmania’s North West.

A bitter recluse, scarred by unceasing guilt and stalked by his unwanted companion, Aitken is compelled to relive the events he had chosen to forget, in the hope he can at last make peace with himself.

While Robert Aitken refused to speak about traumatic events in his life that resulted in a 20 year disappearance, he personally communicated those experiences in the lyrics of his music. The Tramp: the music of Robert Aitken is a collection of those songs.