I Don't Want to Go to the Taj Mahal

A vision of drinking, drugs, culture, sex, politics and masculinity in the Midlands in the 1980s and 1990s.

I Don't Want to Go to the Taj Mahal tells the story of its author, Charlie Hill, living in the Midlands in the 1980s and 1990s.

In a series of vignettes, I Don't Want to Go to the Taj Mahal recounts Hill's experiences with work, identity, sex, politics, drugs, homelessness and dissolution, set against the backdrop of Birmingham at the end of the twentieth century."Hill's many notable gifts as a writer include his narrative economy, his honesty and his pin point clarity. This is mordant, touching and — uniquely for a work of autobiography — entirely without vanity." — Jim Crace

"Utterly rancid. I loved it." — Stewart Home

"Charlie Hill is the chronicler Birmingham needs. Clear-eyed and sharply written, this a memoir — a set of poetic postcards, really — which offers a kaleidoscope of the past, a history of Charlie and of the city itself." - Natalie Haynes, novelist, broadcaster and Brummie

"Hilariously written with a breathtaking precision and economy." - John Doran, The QuietusCharlie Hill is a writer from Birmingham. He is the author Books, The Spaces Between Things and Stuff, and the founder and director of the PowWow Festival of Writing.