Musungu Jim and the Great Chief Tuloko

A highly entertaining romp through the sub-Saharan bush

A genuinely funny, witty and well-timed satire

Patrick Neate is the author of five novels: Musungu Jim and the Great Chief Tuloko, which won a Betty Trask Award, Twelve Bar Blues, which won the 2001 Whitbread Novel of the Year Award, The London Pigeon Wars, City of Tiny Lights and Jerusalem. His nonfiction includes Where You're At, which won the NBCC Award for Criticism in the USA.

Zambawi, a banana republic in sub-Saharan Africa, is on the verge of revolution. President Adini, dictator and eunuch, clings to power whilst his soldiers switch sides so often they don't know which uniform to wear. 
 
All in all, Zambawi is not the ideal location for student teacher Jim Tulloh to indulge in a spot of character building. Yet with the help of Musa, the local witchdoctor, some flatulent weed and headmaster, PK, Jim's days look set to be mellow in the extreme; until that is Jim is kidnapped from his bush school by the rebel Black Boot Gang. But it is when the Gangers invoke the spirit of Zambawi's Great Chief Tuloko that Jim's fate takes a really unexpected turn . . .

Twelve Bar Blues

If I could choose one current British writer to tell tall tales around my fantasy campfire, it would be Patrick Neate

An endearing romp. Continents, and eras, come together in an infectious celebration of a mixed-up music - and the mixed-up people who create it

A rollicking novel...energetic, divinely plotted. If the description of Lick raising the roof of a honky-tonk doesn't make your heart beat a little faster, there might be something wrong with your heart

Patrick Neate is the author of five novels: Musungu Jim and the Great Chief Tuloko, which won a Betty Trask Award, Twelve Bar Blues, which won the 2001 Whitbread Novel of the Year Award, The London Pigeon Wars, City of Tiny Lights and Jerusalem. His nonfiction includes Where You're At, which won the NBCC Award for Criticism in the USA. He is a Londoner.

Spanning three continents and two centuries, Twelve Bar Blues is an epic tale of fate, family, friendship and jazz. At its heart is Lick Holden, a young jazz musician, who sets New Orleans on fire with his cornet at the beginning of the last century. But Lick's passion is to find his lost step-sister and that's a journey that leads him to a place he can call 'home'. Meanwhile, at the other end of the century, we find Sylvia, an English prostitute, and Jim, a young drifter. They're in search of Sylvia's past, lost somewhere in the mists of the Louisiana bayou. 
 
Patrick Neate has written a story that straddles time and space, love and friendship, roots and pilgrimage and everything between. Poignant and hilarious, it will hook you - like a favourite tune - till the end.

Jerusalem

An excellent writer, a marvellous novel. A thrilling read

The most thought-provoking novel of the year. An utterly essential read

Extraordinary, ambitious, bitingly, laugh-out-loud satirical . . . quite simply, a must-read

Wildly inventive, funny and superbly original

Funny and exciting, Neate is never less than vivid, whether describing the hideous conditions of an African prison, or a run-down pub in London. Excellent

A corrosive and blistering satire on colonialism and an eloquent, angry and relevant novel that speaks its own truth to power

A multi-layered, jam-packed and often satirical novel rich in ideas and argument. Neate's most inventive book to date . . . invites comparisons with David Mitchell's genre-busting Cloud Atlas

Wonderful, impressive, fascinating. Neate is always an engaging and sharp writer

Witty and acerbic dialogue, an unflagging comic plot, upbeat entertainment

A very funny take on Englishness, colonialism and the search for authenticity

A curious, ridiculous and insightful exploration of Englishness

Where Neate excels is in his talent for the incongruously horrible ... there are some excellent jokes along the way

His most accomplished novel ... stands at some uber-cool crossroads between pop culture, social theory, racial politics and an old-fashioned belief in the power of storytelling ... it's a tricky thing to keep so many balls spinning but Neate makes it look easy

Patrick Neate is the author of four previous novels: Musungu Jim and the Great Chief Tuloko, which won a Betty Trask Award, Twelve Bar Blues, which won the 2001 Whitbread Novel of the Year Award, The London Pigeon Wars, and City of Tiny Lights. His nonfiction includes Where You're At, which won the NBCC Award for Criticism in the USA.

'He looks like a Brit, this guy. Full of good intentions and bad ideas.' 
 
Straddling two continents and two centuries, Patrick Neate's Jerusalem is a sweeping and hilarious epic of English misadventures abroad and at home. It features a self-serving MP lost and alone in an African dictatorship; a young, ultra-hip entrepreneur looking for something (or someone) new to exploit and an English veteran of a colonial war trying to save England from itself. With a host of other brilliant and brilliantly drawn characters, this is the funniest and most moving story of Englishness as it never was, isn't now and, hopefully, will never be.

The London Pigeon Wars

Patrick Neate's previous book, Twelve Bar Blues, won the Whitbread Novel of the Year and has sold 50,000 copies in paperback to date.

Patrick Neate's two previous novels are Musungu Jim and the Great Chief Tuloko and Twelve Bar Blues. Patrick Neate lives in London, W6.

Master storyteller Patrick Neate has written a funny, provocative and daring tale of London high- and low-life set among the capital's twirtysomethings. Featuring performance poetry; murder; Trafalgar Square's only fried-chicken induced battle; hat selling; bank robbery for the middle classes, love (and other social ailments); as well as pigeons - lots of crazed, angry thinking pigeons - The London Pigeon Wars is both a comic fable for our times and an exciting bird's eye view of life (and death) in the city.

Patrick Neate

Cool, slick and funny ... a delightfully mischievous tweaking of the downbeat, hungover gumshoe. Terrific

A rollicking detective story ... keeps you guessing until the last page

A rare treat in a thriller ... A surprisingly touching book that demands at least one sequel

In getting to the heart of the tensions that run through London's streets, City of Tiny Lights reimagines the modern city afresh

Neate's books have a sparky loquacity that is funny and inventive

Meet Tommy Akhtar, Ugandan Asian cricket fan, devoted son, and not very successful private investigator with offices over his brother Gundappa's mini-cab firm in deepest West London. 
 
He's just woken up from his hangover (combing the parting on his toungue) when his next case comes through the door. It looks like just another investigation when hooker Melody comes into his office asking him to find her co-worker, Natasha, last seen meeting new client at a bar in Shepherd's Market. 
 
But as the search for Natasha intensifies, Tommy's world becomes increasingly sinister. He is drawn into a murder investigation, the criminal underworld, the world of fundamentalist religion and maybe even terrorist activities. Neate brilliantly explores the oddball underbelly and wierd cultural mix of London - The City of Tiny Lights - today and questions just what it really means to be British now.....

Patrick Neate

Praise for City of Tiny Lights

Cool, slick and funny ... a delightfully mischievous tweaking of the downbeat, hungover gumshoe. Terrific

A rollicking detective story ... keeps you guessing until the last page

A rare treat in a thriller ... A surprisingly touching book that demands at least one sequel

Cool, slick and funny ... a delightfully mischievous tweaking of the downbeat, hungover gumshoe. Terrific

A rollicking detective story ... keeps you guessing until the last page

A rare treat in a thriller ... A surprisingly touching book that demands at least one sequel

Cool, slick and funny ... a delightfully mischievous tweaking of the downbeat, hungover gumshoe. Terrific

A rollicking detective story ... keeps you guessing until the last page

A rare treat in a thriller ... A surprisingly touching book that demands at least one sequel

Books by Patrick Neate

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