About this ebook
In a city where power is measured in silences and survival depends on the uniforms we wear—blue, green, pale yellow—a young outsider named Vân discovers that the most dangerous cages are the ones we build ourselves. When he enters the Old City, a place of ancient rituals and brutal hierarchies, he carries with him a secret: a power that can bring even the mightiest to their knees.
Told in two tongues—English and German—Everyday English is a haunting descent into a world of gilded power and watchful eyes. It is a tale of ten years that maps a ruin, of choices made not in freedom but in the stark silence of locked rooms. Here, the Spirit of Discipleship is a competition where the young and powerful vie for the precious Spirit of Water, and where a single outsider can shatter the order of an empire.
As Vân navigates the treacherous politics of the Old City—its painted tombs, its kneeling generals, and its secrets buried deep within the Spirit of the Dragon—he must decide how much of himself he is willing to sacrifice to survive. For in this mirrored labyrinth, memory clings like a ghost, and the terrifying courage required to forget may be the only path forward.
"It is my hope that in this mirrored labyrinth, you will feel the chill of recognition. For the cages we build are often ornate, the selections we face are often silent, and the monsters are rarely the ones we are taught to fear."
Perfect for readers of dual-language fiction, dark fantasy, and psychological thrillers, Everyday English is a genre-defying work that lives in the gap between the word and its echo, the rule and its grotesque enforcement, the self you are and the self you must become.
Thank you for stepping into this arena. May you find your way back out.
About the author
Mark Howell is a writer fascinated by the spaces between languages, identities, and worlds. Drawing from a deep engagement with English, German, and Russian linguistic traditions, Howell crafts narratives that exist in the fracture—where meaning shifts, where power reveals itself, and where the self is forced to adapt or break.
Everyday English: And German EnglischDeutsch Daily is his exploration of duality: the split consciousness of those who live under gilded, watchful powers; the silent scripts that govern our fates based on the color of our cloth; and the haunting question of what we must forget in order to live another hour, another day.
Inspired by the stark traditions of folktale and gothic bureaucracy, Howell's work resists easy categorization. His writing has been described as "a construct of many rooms"—each one unsettling, each one demanding that the reader question what they think they know.
When not writing, Howell can be found navigating the labyrinthine corridors of his own imagination, always searching for the way back out.
