'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 . . .