Thomas Bunting, charming, chaotic, and deeply untruthful, is in despair. His marriage is disintegrating, and his academic career is in ruins: instead of completing his philosophy PhD, he is secretly writing what he hopes will be his masterwork, a vast atheistic project he has privately entitled 'The Book Against God'.

But when his father is suddenly taken ill Thomas returns home, to the tiny village in the north of England where his father still works as a parish priest. Thomas hopes that he may finally be able to communicate honestly with his father, a brilliant and formidable Christian example, and sort out his wayward life. But Thomas is a chronic liar, as well as an atheist, and he finds, instead, that once at home he only falls back into the disastrous and evasive patterns of his childhood years.

'Highly intelligent...This is a book that I shall certainly re-read, for its comic realism, its warm intelligence, its lack of pretension' - A. N. Wilson, Daily Telegraph

About the Author
James Wood has been a staff writer at the New Yorker since 2007. In 2009, he won the National Magazine Award for reviews and criticism. He was the chief literary critic at the Guardian from 1992 to 1995, and a book critic at the New Republic from 1995 to 2007. He has published a number of books with Cape, including How Fiction Works, which has been translated into thirteen languages.

Reviews
It is written with lovely, controlled precision. His descriptions deliver little aesthetic shock-charges of pleasure...There are delights of simple recognition-but there are also deeper emotional depth-charges * Sunday Telegraph *
Striking...The Book Against God is a gifted and winning first novel, neatly knotted at the end * Guardian *
Thought-provoking and full of sharp-eyed observations of characters and places * Daily Mail *
At once hilarious and haunting... It keeps your attention in every sentence -- Bernard O'Donoghue * Irish Times *
A work of skilful craftsmanship, which teasingly engages and disengages one's sympathies * The Economist *



Book Information
ISBN 9780099453574
Author James Wood
Format Paperback
Page Count 256
Imprint Vintage
Publisher Vintage Publishing
Weight(grams) 181g
Dimensions(mm) 198mm * 129mm * 16mm