About this ebook
In a landscape where power wears the mask of benevolence and surveillance hides behind gilded walls, a young man navigates the treacherous space between who he is and who he must become. This is not a story of a single world, but of the fracture between them—told in two tongues, English and German, much like the split consciousness of those who live under the weight of a watchful authority.
Everyday English and German Fluent Tracks is a haunting exploration of survival, memory, and the invisible scripts of power that decide our fate based on the color of our cloth—blue, green, pale yellow. Through a mirrored labyrinth of instruction and nightmare, clarity and chaos, the narrative lives in the gap between the word and its echo, the rule and its grotesque enforcement.
Ten years can measure a reign, a ritual, or a ruin. Here, it maps a descent.
As you move through these pages—restless, shifting between languages and states of being—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.
A genre-defying work of literary fiction that blends gothic bureaucracy, folktale tradition, and linguistic duality into something wholly original.
About the author
Mark Howell is a writer fascinated by the spaces between languages, the fractures between worlds, and the quiet courage required to survive systems designed to consume us. Drawing on the stark traditions of gothic bureaucracy and folktale, Howell crafts narratives that challenge readers to question, to persist, and to find their way back out.
Everyday English and German Fluent Tracks is his exploration of duality—linguistic, psychological, and moral—and a testament to the idea that the most terrifying cages are often the ones we build ourselves.
When not writing, Howell can be found navigating the equally complex landscapes of everyday life, always listening for the echo between the word and what it fails to say.
