Prentis, the narrator of this nightmarish novel, catalogs "dead crimes" for a branch of the London Police Department and suspects that he is going crazy. His files keep vanishing. His boss subjects him to cryptic taunts. His family despises him. And as Prentis desperately tries to hold on to the scraps of his sanity, he uncovers a conspiracy of blackmail and betrayal that extends from his department and into the buried past of his father, a war hero code-named "Shuttlecock"--and, lately, a resident of a hospital for the insane.
"An astonishing study of forms of guilt, laced with a thread of detection--and outrageous humor." -The Sunday Times (London)
"A world that is half Kafka, half Orwell--joined on a cord of elegant, tough, swift writing." -San Francisco Examiner
GRAHAM SWIFT was born in 1949 and is the author of ten novels, two collections of short stories, and Making an Elephant, a book of essays, portraits, poetry, and reflections on his life in writing. With Waterland he won The Guardian Fiction Award, and with Last Orders, the Booker Prize. Both novels have since been made into films. His work has appeared in more than thirty languages.
View titles by Graham Swift
Prentis, the narrator of this nightmarish novel, catalogs "dead crimes" for a branch of the London Police Department and suspects that he is going crazy. His files keep vanishing. His boss subjects him to cryptic taunts. His family despises him. And as Prentis desperately tries to hold on to the scraps of his sanity, he uncovers a conspiracy of blackmail and betrayal that extends from his department and into the buried past of his father, a war hero code-named "Shuttlecock"--and, lately, a resident of a hospital for the insane.
Praise
"An astonishing study of forms of guilt, laced with a thread of detection--and outrageous humor." -The Sunday Times (London)
"A world that is half Kafka, half Orwell--joined on a cord of elegant, tough, swift writing." -San Francisco Examiner
GRAHAM SWIFT was born in 1949 and is the author of ten novels, two collections of short stories, and Making an Elephant, a book of essays, portraits, poetry, and reflections on his life in writing. With Waterland he won The Guardian Fiction Award, and with Last Orders, the Booker Prize. Both novels have since been made into films. His work has appeared in more than thirty languages.
View titles by Graham Swift
