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Reading lists

7 riveting novels on battles for power

Seven of the most delightful, and despicable, schools in literature

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7 of the most delightful, and despicable, schools in literature

From the author of The Bee Sting

The Mark and the Void

WINNER OF THE EVERYMAN WODEHOUSE PRIZE 2016 
 
A comic masterpiece about love, art, greed and the banking crisis, from the author of Skippy Dies 
 
What links the Investment Bank of Torabundo, www.myhotswaitress.com (yes, hots with an s, don't ask), an art heist, a novel called For the Love of a Clown, a four-year-old boy named after TV detective Remington Steele, a lonely French banker, a tiny Pacific island, and a pest control business run by an ex-KGB man? You guessed it . . . 
 
The Mark and the Void is Paul Murray's madcap new novel of institutional folly, following the success of his wildly original breakout hit, Skippy Dies. While marooned at his banking job in the bewilderingly damp and insular realm known as Ireland, Claude Martingale is approached by a down-on-his-luck author, Paul, looking for his next great subject. Claude finds that his life gets steadily more exciting under Paul's fictionalizing influence; he even falls in love with a beautiful waitress. But Paul's plan is not what it seems-and neither is Claude's employer, the Bank of Torabundo, which inflates through dodgy takeovers and derivatives-trading until-well, you can probably guess how that shakes out. 
 
The Mark and the Void is a stirring examination of the deceptions carried out in the names of art, love and commerce - and is also probably the funniest novel ever written about a financial crisis.

This novel's arrival deserves a trumpeting fanfare... curiously brilliant, intricately entertaining... banker plus struggling novelist equals page turner

The Mark and the Void is so sensationally good...it takes the global financial crisis by its throat, and shakes it into giving birth to a wild, intelligent, angry, witty, uproariously funny, devastating novel

People always tell me 'If you love Paul Murray so much, why don't you marry him?' Now thanks to recent legislation in his native Ireland, I finally can. And so should you, reader. The Mark and the Void not only monetizes the death of the novel, but makes us believe in its resurrection. Praise the Lord for Paul Murray's big brain and tender heart

The Mark and the Void is just as funny [as Skippy Dies] , though perhaps with an even deeper sense of alienation at its heart

Effervescent prose... [It] takes on the crackle of a thriller [and] wears its anger over the global financial crisis with a beguilingly, deceptively light touch

Paul Murray has done the impossible: he's written a novel about international finance that is a hilarious page-turner with a beating human heart

The Mark and the Void is Murray's best book yet - a wildly ambitious, state-of-the-nation novel, and a scabrously funny yet deeply humane satire on the continuing fall-out of the biggest financial crisis in 75 years. Think Bonfire of the Vanities with a heart

Paul Murray was born in Dublin in 1975 and is the author of An Evening of Long Goodbyes, Skippy Dies, The Mark and the Void and The Bee Sting. An Evening of Long Goodbyes was shortlisted for the Whitbread First Novel Award and nominated for the Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award. Skippy Dies was shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award, and longlisted for the Booker Prize. The Mark and the Void won the Everyman Wodehouse Prize. The Bee Sting won the Nero Book of the Year Award and the An Post Irish Book of the Year, and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, the Writers’ Prize for Fiction and the Kirkus Prize for Fiction. Paul Murray lives in Dublin.

What links the Bank of Torabundo, www.myhotswaitress.com (yes, hots with an s, don't ask), an art heist, a novel called For Love of a Clown, a four-year-old boy named after TV detective Remington Steele, a lonely French banker, a tiny Pacific island and a pest-control business run by an ex-KGB man? You've guessed it . . . 
 
The Mark and the Void is a stirring examination of the deceptions carried out in the names of art, love and commerce - and is also probably the funniest novel ever written about a financial crisis.

Skippy Dies

Paul Murray's Skippy Dies is a tragicomic masterpiece about a Dublin boarding school 
 
LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2010 
 
Ruprecht Van Doren is an overweight genius whose hobbies include very difficult maths and the Search of Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence. Daniel 'Skippy' Juster is his roommate. In the grand old Dublin institution that is Seabrook College for Boys, nobody pays either of them much attention. But when Skippy falls for Lori, the frisbee-playing siren from the girls' school next door, suddenly all kinds of people take an interest - including Carl, part-time drug-dealer and official school psychopath. . . 
 
A tragic comedy of epic sweep and dimension, Skippy Dies scours the corners of the human heart and wrings every drop of pathos, humour and hopelessness out of life, love, Robert Graves, mermaids, M-theory, and everything in between. 
 
'That rare thing, a comic epic. . . Murray is a brilliant comic writer, but also humane and touching, and he captures the misery and elation, joy and anxiety of teenage life' David Nicholls, Guardian 
 
'Novels rarely come as funny and as moving as this utterly brilliant exploration of teenhood and the anticlimax of becoming an adult . . . one of the finest comic novels written anywhere' Eileen Battersby, Irish Times 
 
'I loved Skippy Dies . . . three novels fused into one ignited tragicomic tour de force' Ali Smith, Times Literary Supplement Books of the Year 
 
'An unforgettably exuberant saga set in an Irish boys' school. The insulting repartee is Shakespearean, the minor characters hilarious, and Murray captures the fleeting joys and lasting sorrows of adolescence perfectly' Emma Donoghue, Daily Telegraph 
 
'A triumph . . . brimful of wit and narrative energy' Sunday Times 
 
'The sprawling brilliance of Paul Murray's darkly comic second novel works on many different levels . . . When you finish the last page, you may be tempted to start all over again' Metro

Savagely funny, brimful of wit, energy, poetry and vision, unflaggingly entertaining. A triumph

One of the most enjoyable, funny and moving reads of this year. A rare tragicomedy that's both genuinely tragic and genuinely comic

Darkly comic, dazzles, every line drips ideas for fun. Unputdownably funny, captivating. A masterpiece

Ambitious, wise, funny, fiercely intelligent. The beauty of this cynical, hopeful, beautifully written book is that it builds a detailed world to explore life, the universe and everything

Hilarious, heartbreaking, totally engrossing. A triumph

Noisy, hilarious, tragic, endlessly inventive, plain brilliant. A carnival of a novel

Novels rarely come as funny and as moving as this utterly brilliant 
exploration of teenhood and the anticlimax of becoming an adult . . . Skippy Dies is intuitive, truthful and one of the finest comic novels written anywhere. Dies? Never! Skippy lives

I loved Skippy Dies . . . three novels fused into one ignited tragicomic tour de force

Skippy Dies is one great high-octane fizz bang of a book

A comic epic. Murray is a brilliant comic writer, but also humane and touching, and he captures the misery and elation, joy and anxiety of teenage life. A brilliant depiction of the heaven and hell of male adolescence

Murray's writing has earned a place in the contemporary international canon . . . Murray's characters are so three-dimensionally drawn and brought to such vivid life that they may haunt your dreams

'Skippy and Ruprecht are having a doughnut-eating race one evening when Skippy turns purple and falls off his chair . . .' 
 
And so begins this epic, tragic, comic, brilliant novel set in and around Dublin's Seabrook College for Boys. Principally concerning the lives, loves, mistakes and triumphs of overweight maths-whiz Ruprecht Van Doren and his roommate Daniel 'Skippy' Juster, it features a frisbee-throwing siren called Lori, the joys (and horrors) of first love, the use and blatant misuse of prescription drugs, Carl (the official school psychopath), various attempts to unravel string theory . . . while at the same time exploring the very deepest mysteries of the human heart.

An Evening of Long Goodbyes

The brilliant first novel by the author of The Bee Sting 
 
Acclaimed as one of the funniest and most assured debuts of recent years, An Evening of Long Goodbyes is the story of Dubliner Charles Hythloday and the heroic squandering of the family inheritance. Featuring drinking, greyhound racing, vanishing furniture, more drinking, old movies, assorted Dublin lowlife, eviction and the perils of community theatre, Paul Murray's first novel is a tour de force of comedic writing wrapped in an honest-to-goodness tale of a man - and a family - living in denial. 
 
'Hilarious, rich and satisfying' The Times Literary Supplement 
 
'Comedy of the highest calibre and a good, fast-paced yarn. An excellent read' Sunday Tribune 
 
'Arguably the funniest debut in years, An Evening of Long Goodbyes ranks with Zadie Smith's White Teeth as a stunning document of an English-speaking metropolis in flux' LA Times

A freewheeling adventure through modern Dublin. Hilarious, rich and satisfying

Innately entertaining. The plot scuttles along with Wodehouse-like delirium

Every joke, every observation, every name reverberates with playful nuance and nervy significance; the end result is a gleeful tweak of the New Ireland's proud nose

One of the most entertaining and laugh-out-loud Irish yarns of recent years with a stack of one-liners any stand-up comedian would kill for. Quite hilarious

Hugely original and funny. Nothing quite like it has been written before. Its wordplay and knockabout farce has a depth rare in humorous writing

Daft, engaging, always thoroughly likeable . . . a writer of great talent

Acclaimed as one of the funniest and most assured Irish novels of the last decade, An Evening of Long Goodbyes is the story of Dubliner Charles Hythloday and the heroic squandering of the family inheritance. Featuring drinking, greyhound racing, vanishing furniture, more drinking, old movies, assorted Dublin lowlife, eviction and the perils of community theatre, Paul Murray's debut novel is a tour de force of comedic writing wrapped in an honest-to-goodness tale of a man - and a family - living in denial . . .

Paul Murray

The Barnes family is in trouble. Dickie's once-lucrative car dealership is going under, and while his wife is frantically selling off her jewellery on eBay, he's busy building an apocalypse-proof bunker in the woods. Meanwhile their teenage daughter is veering off the rails, in thrall to a toxic friendship, and her little brother is falling into the black hole of the internet... 
 
Where did it all go wrong? The present is in crisis but the causes lie deep in the past. How long can this unhappy family wait before they have to face the truth? And if the story has already been written, is there still time to find a happy ending?

Paul Murray

The Bee Sting

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