Available Formats
Hardback, Main
Published: 7th January 2025
Paperback, Main
Published: 4th November 2025
CD-Audio, Audiobook
Published: 21st January 2025
Nobody's Empire: 'Empathetic, funny and heartwarming.' Buzz Magazine
By (Author) Stuart Murdoch
Faber & Faber
Faber & Faber
4th November 2025
5th June 2025
Main
United Kingdom
General
Fiction
Popular music
823.92
Paperback
384
Width 129mm, Height 198mm
It's the early 1990s in Glasgow, and Stephen - music loving romantic - has emerged from a lengthy hospital stay diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome, a little-understood disease that has robbed him of any prospects of work, a social life or independent living. Meeting fellow strugglers, who the world seems to care less and less for, they form their own support group and try to get by as cheaply and as painlessly as possible.
Finding that he has the ability to write songs, albeit in a slow and fledgling way, Stephen wakes to the possibility of a spiritual life beyond the everyday. Leaving Glasgow in search of a cure in the mythic warmth of California, Stephen and his friend Richard float between hostels, sofas, and park benches. Could the trip really offer them both a new-world reinvention
Stuart Murdoch is the lead singer and songwriter for the iconic Glasgow-based band Belle and Sebastian. Since forming in the mid-1990s, the band has released twelve studio albums to high acclaim, including If You're Feeling Sinister and The Boy With the Arab Strap. In 2012 Murdoch scripted, composed, and directed the movie God Help the Girl. An outspoken advocate for sufferers of Myalgic Encephalomyelitis /Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Murdoch is also an Ambassador for the Open Medicine Foundation working to promote awareness of ME/CFS.