'A complex literary comedy from an extraordinarily powerful writer,.' Malcolm Bradbury
'The great unbreakable wild horse of the 1960s British literary stable.' Rose Tremain
'Rich as a compost heap.' Melvyn Bragg


Join an eccentric novelist on the run from his obsessive would-be biographer in this comic farce by the radical Nobel Laureate and author of Lord of the Flies.

Why should I conceal the fact that I had found a full professor of Eng. Lit. rifling my dustbin?

Fame, fortune, alcoholism, a failing marriage: for novelist Wilfred Barclay, his final unbearable irritation is his would-be-biographer, the young academic Professor Rick L. Tucker, who is determined to become The Barclay Man.

Locked in a lethal relationship, the two men stumble across Europe, shedding wives, self-respect and identities in a game of literary cat and mouse - and the climax of their odyssey, when it comes, is as inevitable as it is unexpected . . .

Join an eccentric novelist on the run from his obsessive would-be biographer in this comic farce by the radical Nobel Laureate and author of Lord of the Flies.

About the Author

William Golding (1911 - 1993) was born in Cornwall and educated at Marlborough Grammar School and Brasenose College, Oxford. Before becoming a writer, he was an actor, small-boat sailor, musician and schoolteacher. In 1940 he joined the Royal Navy and took part in the D-Day operation and liberation of Holland. Lord of the Flies, his first novel, was rejected by several publishers but rescued from the 'reject pile' at Faber and published in 1954. It became a modern classic selling millions of copies, translated into 44 languages and made into a film by Peter Brook in 1963. Golding wrote eleven other novels, a play and two essay collections. He won the Booker Prize for Rites of Passage in 1980 and the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1983. He was knighted in 1988 and died in 1993. www.william-golding.co.uk


DBC Pierre was born in 1961 in South Australia and was brought up in Mexico and the UK. Formerly a designer and a cartoonist, his debut novel, Vernon God Little (2003), won the Man Booker Prize, the Whitbread Prize for Best First Novel, the Bollinger Wodehouse Everyman Award and the James Joyce Award. His other novels include Ludmila's Broken English (2006), Lights Out in Wonderland (2010), Breakfast with the Borgias (2014) and Meanwhile in Dopamine City (2020). He is also the author of Petit Mal (2013), a selection of stories and non-fiction; Release the Bats (2016), which explores the art of storytelling; and a collection of true stories, Big Snake Little Snake: An Inquiry into Risk (2022).

Book Information
ISBN 9780571371716
Author William Golding
Format Paperback
Page Count 272
Imprint Faber & Faber
Publisher Faber & Faber
Weight(grams) 228g
Dimensions(mm) 198mm * 129mm * 16mm