Man-Eating Typewriter

''A major talent'' Irvine Welsh

''Remarkable, beautiful, magic. Like Ulysses for those who can''t cope with reading Ulysses'' Paolo Hewitt

''We''re all in the gutter but some of us are ogling the sparkles.''

Set at the fag-end of the 1960s and framed as a novel within a novel published by a seedy London purveyor of pulp fiction, MAN-EATING TYPEWRITER is a homage to the avant-garde counterculture of the 20th century. Told in Polari, it is the story of an anarchist named Raymond Novak and his plan to commit a ''fantabulosa crime'' in 276 days that will revolt the world. A surrealistic odyssey that stretches from occupied Paris to the cruise-liner SS Unmentionable to lawless Tangier before settling in Swinging London, the book casts Novak as an agitator and freedom fighter - but, as his memoirs become more and more threatening, his publishers find themselves far more involved in his violent personality cult than they ever intended.