Titles beginning with ‘The Man Who’ have become a prevalent trope in storytelling over the past 150 years. This book, The Man Who, is a collection of 243 titles from 1869 to 2023 across literature, theatre and film that lays bare the unchecked ambition, curious pursuits and dubious power of the man at the centre of it all.
Always active and in control, 'The Man Who' is the architect of his own destiny. Even the titles indicating his failure still carry the same expectation: to be knowledgeable, powerful, exceptional. It's a truly hilarious reading experience but, seriously now, this is a collection that exposes society’s obsession with masculinity in all its contradictory, unattainable glory in which the isolation of 'The Man Who' is granted the stage all to himself.
Building Fiction, 256pp, 10cm x 16cm, hardcover, 2025