Death Rattle is a veritable and kaleidoscopic portrayal of the isolation, joy and abandonment that beats and thrums within the cosmopolite of a city's restless heart. It is a trilogy comprised of poems, narratives, lyrics and aphorisms springing out of Oslo's subterranean streets. The duality of the city and the rural act as a backcloth where love, lust and loss flourish wildly. For Hughes, the city is female, a fleeting, alluring and violable symbol, the rural a sacred poetic resource gilded with solace, delusion and healing. Through choice encounters and an array of personae, the poet bestows with flinty wit, ruthless reasoning and solemn reflection a wistful eye upon the menagerie of the city's inhabitants.