A brilliant fantastical satire from the Booker-shortlisted author, reminiscent of the best of Jonathan Swift 'Magnus Mills is Britain's most original writer, so forget everything you've been told about fiction - he has never even heard of the rules that apply to everyone else' The Times 'A beautiful, singular book; funny and acutely observed' Independent Far away, in the ancient empire of Greater Fallowfields, things are falling apart. The imperial orchestra is presided over by a conductor who has never played a note, the clocks are changed constantly to ensure that the sun always sets at five o' clock, and the Astronomer Royal is only able to use the observatory telescope when he can find a sixpence to put in its slot. But while the kingdom drifts, awaiting the return of the young emperor, who has gone abroad and communicates only by penny post, a sinister and unfamiliar enemy is getting closer and closer... A Cruel Bird Came to the Nest and Looked In is Magnus Mills's most ambitious work to date. A surreal portrait of a world that, although strange and distant, contains rather too many similarities to our own for the alien not to become brilliantly familiar and disturbingly close to home. It is comic writing at its best - and it is Magnus Mills's most ambitious, enjoyable and rewarding novel to date.

'He has no literary precedent, and he also appears to have no imitators. He mines a seam that no one else touches on, every sentence in every book having a Magnus Mills ring to it that no other writer could produce' Independent

About the Author
Magnus Mills is the author of the story collection Screwtop Thompson and six novels, including The Restraint of Beasts, which won the McKitterick Prize and was shortlisted for both the Booker Prize and the Whitbread (now the Costa) First Novel Award in 1999. His books have been translated into twenty languages. He lives in London.

Reviews
Magnus Mills is Britain's most original writer, so forget everything you've been told about fiction - he has never even heard of the rules that apply to everyone else * The Times *
Just when you think Magnus Mills couldn't possibly get any better, off he goes. This is a masterpiece * Dan Rhodes, author of Timoleon Vieta Come Home *
Comedy's blackest, funniest and most astute practitioner * Daily Telegraph *
A beautiful, singular book; funny and acutely observed * Independent on Sunday *
Mills is a true original who has always ploughed his own - occasionally surreal - furrow in a series of comic gems. His latest, a quirky mix of fairy tale and political satire, offers clear parallels between the fictional world and our own. It's like Orwell's 1984 rewritten by Tolkien * Mail on Sunday *
One of our finest comic stylists on top form * Financial Times *
A Cruel Bird is as utterly odd, endearing and disturbing a book as anything he has written before. The novel's unnamed narrator is the principal composer to the imperial court of a place called Greater Fallowfields, which bears about as much and as little resemblance to anywhere in the actual world as any of Mills' places and locations. The plot is similarly indistinct and, thus, vaguely and impressively massive -- Ian Samson * Guardian *



Book Information
ISBN 9781408821978
Author Magnus Mills
Format Paperback
Page Count 288
Imprint Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Weight(grams) 198g