DEBUT NOVEL - WINTER SUN

He called me his ‘only friend’, his ‘best friend’. He wanted to be my friend ‘for life’. I had no idea what he was saying. He seemed so alone, so vacant. I was voiceless against his lament.

“…a page turner!” Niamh Boyce, author of The Herbalist & Her Kind

WINTER SUN, my debut novel will be published by Afsana Press on 13 March 2024.

“Winter Sun is a meticulous and vivid chronicle of a sons’ week in Tenerife with his aging father. Written from the heart, with skill and honesty, this is a warm, highly intelligent exploration of what it is to love a difficult and complicated father. Just beautiful. I was thoroughly moved by Winter Sun.” Niamh Boyce, author of The Herbalist and Her Kind.

 “I enjoyed this very much. By making his story very specifically Jewish/Irish, Lentin actually releases its universal quality. Everything about the characters and their relationship feels recognisable and true for sons and fathers everywhere. There will be no final answers. Beautifully achieved.” Gerry Stembridge, author of The Effect of Her.

“A gentle, finely crafted novel with a brilliantly realised father-son relationship, and a nuanced, beautifully written observation of old age. It’s fitting our narrator reads Saul Bellow in this book, because for me, Lentin’s achievement in ‘Winter Sun’ sits alongside Bellow’s in ‘Seize the Day’; they both create such a memorable and vivid rendering of a father-son relationship in adulthood.” Kevin Curran, author of Youth, Citizens and Beatsploitation.

“Bittersweet, funny and tender, Winter Sun is about the mysterious relationship between parent and adult child, the fragility of the ageing body, the strangeness of family holidays and the comforts of alcohol and literature. You can’t help falling in love with Miki and Abba, willing them on to find a common language — and ideally a whiskey they can both agree on.” Viv Groskop, author of The Anna Karenina Fix

A finalist in the Irish Novel Fair 2020, WINTER SUN is a captivating story of a son’s frustrating relationship with his father that comes to a head during a winter break in Tenerife.

Centred in the Hotel Optimist, amidst other hotel guests and a friendship made with the holiday rep, we enter the son’s quest to better connect and understand his father. Over nine days, this warm and honest novel explores what it is to love a difficult and complicated father with an honesty and humanity that includes many hilarious moments.

Described as a ‘page-turner’ by award-winning Irish author Niamh Boyce and ‘beautifully achieved’ by Irish author and film writer Gerry Stembridge, there is a lightness of touch in this profound book about a sons’ love for his father and his desire to understand him, and to want that love and respect returned.

Author Miki Lentin commented on the release of his debut novel, “Winter Sun has been a labour of love. I wrote it during my MA, put it aside for a couple of years after it failed to sell at the start of the pandemic, and then redrafted it in 2023. I’m thrilled that I have found a home for it through Afsana Press. Writing Winter Sun took me to places I often didn’t want to go, but I wanted to show that we don’t always really know our parents and that sometimes, despite our best efforts, they remain hidden from us. But writing Winter Sun as autofiction gave me the freedom to write a story that I hope has resonance for readers out there. My father died in 2014, so it’s perhaps fitting that Winter Sun will be published in 2024, ten years after his death. I hope he will have been proud!”

For more information and review copies contact:

Afsana Press - Goran Baba Ali - goranbaba@gmail.com

Available on Amazon - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Winter-Sun-Miki-Lentin/dp/1739982495

DEBUT COLLECTION OF SHORT STORIES

 

“Lentin takes linear time and smashes it to pieces, reassembling the shards as narrative mosaics.” Lynda Clark, author Dreaming in Quantum.

INNER CORE, my collection of short stories was published by Afsana Press -

on 1 May 2022 and is now available on Amazon

“…consistently enthralling...funny, moving and disturbing in equal measure.” Francis Gilbert, author of I’m a Teacher Get Me Out of Here.

“Narrative slides effectively in and out of time, and the voice feels authentic,” about story Inner Core. David Shields, author of Reality Hunger.

"With delicacy, Lentin lets the most ordinary items and details – clothes that smell of bread, meringues, a café mess, a butter dish – to suggest larger, more nuanced and complex feelings and perceptions." Gerry Stembridge, author of The Effect of Her, co-writer of the film Nora.

"Miki's stories about working with refugees are sensitively observed and moving - and they will enrich your understanding of an ethically complex subject." Daniel Trilling, journalist and author of Lights in the Distance and Bloody Nasty People.

Inner Core is Miki Lentin’s debut collection of short stories. They cover death, anxiety, masculinity, family and children and social good. All things that touch the life of a middle-aged man. In these stories, written over the past two years, Miki Lentin travels to Istanbul with his wife while sleep-deprived, recounts memories of working and growing up in Dublin and explores what it means to do good in society today.

The collection is split into three parts: the first explores middle-age and mental health, the second looks at Miki’s work with refugees and the third speaks to memoires of his childhood. All told with Lentin's minimalist tone, Inner Core portrays his life on the edge.

All the proceeds from the sales of this book will go to the refugee charity foodKIND, that supports refugees and vulnerable groups in crisis on the mainland of Greece, providing food for over 700 people every day. Since May 2016, foodKIND has served almost 1 million meals and is committed to doing everything it can to make sure that in the places they work, no one goes hungry. To donate and to find out more visit https://www.foodkind.org/

WRITING BIOGRAPHY

 
MIR Photo.JPG
 

I took up writing while travelling the world with my family a few years. I completed a Creative Writing MA at Birkbeck, University of London in 2020, where I graduated with Merit.

I was a finalist in the 2020 Irish Writers Centre Novel Fair for my debut novel Winter Sun. I have been highly placed in competitions including the Short Story Memoir Prize with Fish Publishing in 2020 and 2022, Leicester Writes, Bricklane Bookshop Short Story Award 2022, and have been published in Litro, Storgy, Story Radio and MIR amongst others.

I am working on my second book Bird in Space, about a middle-aged man who travels to Romania to try to save an old family home that is due for demolition, but ends up finding out more about himself.

A full list of my writing successes is below.

My writing SUCCESSES