Mr Gorzug and the Matter of Home: 4

Mr. Gorzug has survived war, paperwork, Ofsted-adjacent scrutiny, and Year Nine in wet weather.Staying in England should have been the difficult part.Instead, Halcyon Comprehensive has done something far more dangerous. It has made him permanent.His name is on the rotas. Children look for him at the gate. Staff hand him problems before the systems have finished failing to solve them. He is no longer the impossible orc warlord who happened to arrive at a struggling British school. He is part of how the school works.But being needed is not the same as having a life.As the trust begins turning Halcyon's hard-won recovery into "reassuring visual material," Gorzug finds himself facing a subtler battle: success packaged for other people's purposes, children made into examples, and a school in danger of becoming more useful as a story than as a place.Worse still, there is Miss Khan.Sharp, composed, infuriatingly perceptive Miss Khan, who knows exactly how he takes his tea, stands beside him before trouble has finished forming, and appears to understand the parts of him he has not yet translated into English. Gorzug understands duty. He understands loyalty. He understands standing in the weak places until they hold.He is less certain what to do when being wanted is not an attack.Funny, tender, and sharply observant, Mr. Gorzug And The Matter Of Home is a comic fantasy about schools, belonging, institutional nonsense, and the alarming discovery that building a future may require even more courage than defending one.

Pages: 390, Paperback, Independently published