My Name Is Legion

Description

'So it was that within minutes of Father Vivyan's soul leaving his body and soaring God alone knows where...the silence of that religious house was broken...They could hear the coarse accents of Lennox Mark shouting, "Don't you realize - you CUNT - don't you realize who I FUCKING am?" ' Had Father Vivyan been killed by his own pride and fanaticism; by his belief that he could 'save' a dangerous and mentally unstable boy? Had he been killed by his own fanatical posture, his alliance with those whom the rest of the world saw as terrorists? Or had he been destroyed by the popular Press and in particular by the proprietor of The Legion, Lennox Mark? Perhaps by a bit of all those things...A.N. Wilson has written a savage satire on the morality of contemporary Britain - its Press, its politics, its Church, its rich, its underclass. His London is a bleak, if occasionally hilarious, place: murderous, randy, money-obsessed and haunted by strange gods.

A. N. Wilson was born in 1950 and educated at Rugby and New College, Oxford. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, he has held a prominent position in the world of literature and journalism, winning prizes for much of his work. He lives in North London.

Far and away the best novel of the year was A. N. Wilson's angry, passionate and spiritual onslaught on modern Mammon and the media... which should have won the Man Booker prize, but typically was not shortlisted -- Hugh Massingberd * Spectator * A wonderful, thrilling depiction of media manipulation, corruption, tolerance and promiscuity. It's so good, and so wise, it hurts. It's the late-20th century in a gulp -- Frances Fyfield * The Week * A real rattler of an entertainment -- Philip Hensher * Spectator * Blisteringly funny... My Name Is Legion is not one of those soft-centred satires that ducks the issue. It throws down the gauntlet to Fleet Street and asks some tough questions of the newspapers we read -- David Robson * Sunday Telegraph * My Name Is Legion weaves a compelling modern morality tale of crime and punishment that links the world of the rich and powerful to that of the poor and dispossessed... All of this is highly enjoyable, and kept going with an irresistibly waspish verve -- Amanda Craig * Independent on Sunday *