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Unable to work on his novel about Liverpool's slave trade, Benson is teaching creative writing and wandering the city. The pupils who bring him their fantasies are a sad, dispossessed group with varying degrees of literary talent. Caught up in a series of bizarre events, Benson nevertheless finds his own imagination sparked by an encounter with two old army colleagues: Thompson, down-and-out and homeless; and Slater, a fabulously wealthy entrepreneur. In trying to heal old wounds, Benson unleashes a plan that just may blow up in his face. "There is a violent resolution to this obsessive and provocative novel that examines the abscesses and abysses beneath the violence of urban life and offers a quixotic personal answer." -
The Times [London] "Fine descriptive writing and spirited humanity." -
The Guardian Published for the first time in the United States Booker Prize-winning author of
Sacred Hunger
About the author
Barry Unsworth (1930-2012), who won the Booker Prize for
Sacred Hunger, was a Booker Prize finalist for
Morality Play and was long-listed for the Man Booker Prize for
The Ruby in Her Navel.
Summary
A "powerfully done" (Times Literary Supplement) and tantalizingly semi-autobiographical novel from the author of the Booker Prize-winning Sacred Hunger.
