The Black Book

''The most exhilarating surge of language, style and sordid English manners [in] literature.''DBC Pierre

''A wild, passionate, brilliantly gaudy and flamboyant extravaganza ... Richly obscene, energetically morbid, very often very funny ... Above all, stylistically and verbally inventive.'' Observer

Death Gregory has disappeared, abandoning his diaries in a seedy London hotel. Discovered by Lawrence Lucifer, they depict a clique of intellectuals living a life of squalid debauchery: struggling writers and artists consumed by loves, lusts, and a quest for innovation. But as they satisfy violent appetites of the flesh - and mind - their descent into darkness accelerates ...

Written when he was only 24, Lawrence Durrell described his controversial third novel as ''a two-fisted attack on literature by an angry young man of the thirties'' in which he ''first heard the sound of my own voice.'' First published in