Drivetime

Description

Sounds like easy money: collecting an antique for a rich stranger. Alan Allen, freshly unemployed, short of cash, and caught up in a bizarre case of mistaken identity, is about to find out otherwise. But not before being swept on a European wild-goose chase in this refreshing, surreal and gloriously funny novel.

James Meek was born in London in 1962 and grew up in Dundee. Drivetime was his second novel. His book The People's Act of Love (2005) won the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize, the SAC Book of the Year Award, was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and has been translated into more than twenty languages. He has published two collections of short stories, Last Orders (1992) and The Museum of Doubt (2000), which was shortlisted for a Macmillan Silver Pen award. His most recent novel We Are Now Beginning our Descent draws on his reporting for the Guardian from Afghanistan on the war against the Taliban and the liberation of Kabul. His journalism on Iraq and about Guantanamo Bay won a number of British and international awards. He now lives in London.

* As though David Lynch has been let loose on the set of a drawing-room comedy. The Times * A compelling tour de force. The maniac energy of Kerouac pulses throughout the prose. Extraordinary. Scotsman * More Groundhog Day than Grand Tour, this is existential travel angst at its best. Guardian * One of the country's finest writers GQ * Outstanding. Not unlike finding yourself in a hall of mirrors. Meek has a gift for the surreal. The Times