Description

‘A major talent’ Irvine Welsh

‘Remarkable, beautiful, magic. Like Ulysses for those who can’t cope with reading Ulysses’ Paolo Hewitt

‘We’re all in the gutter but some of us are ogling the sparkles.’

Set at the fag-end of the 1960s and framed as a novel within a novel published by a seedy London purveyor of pulp fiction, MAN-EATING TYPEWRITER is a homage to the avant-garde counterculture of the 20th century. Told in Polari, it is the story of an anarchist named Raymond Novak and his plan to commit a ‘fantabulosa crime’ in 276 days that will revolt the world. A surrealistic odyssey that stretches from occupied Paris to the cruise-liner SS Unmentionable to lawless Tangier before settling in Swinging London, the book casts Novak as an agitator and freedom fighter – but, as his memoirs become more and more threatening, his publishers find themselves far more involved in his violent personality cult than they ever intended.

Constructed like a hallucinogenic cocktail of A Clockwork Orange, Pale Fire and Jean Genet’s jailbird fantasies, MAN-EATING TYPEWRITER is an act of seductive sedition by a writer with unfathomable literary talent and boldness. Wild, transgressive, erotic and resolutely uncompromising, this marks the return of a writer who is out there on an island of his own making; a book that will be talked about, celebrated and puzzled over for decades.

Publisher Review

Single-handely proving the novel isn't dead, Milward breathes new life into the form in this erudite, witty yet immaculately crafted, romp of a book -- Ali Millar, author of THE LAST DAYS Man-Eating Typewriter is truly extraordinary: as if Mervyn Peake and Kenneth Williams wrote a book with William Burroughs -- Michael Bracewell, author of UNFINISHED BUSINESS Remarkable, beautiful, magic. Like Ulysses for those who can't cope with reading Ulysses -- Paolo Hewitt Outrageous, audacious and shameless, Man-Eating Typewriter is a brilliantly constructed murderous lark. Like A Clockwork Orange adapted by John Waters at his most gleeful -- John Higgs, author of LOVE AND LET DIE I love this book, this jaw-dropping, obsessive love-letter to the alchemy of the word -- David Keenan, author of INDUSTRY OF MAGIC AND LIGHT