There has been much talk of late about how the continuing financial turmoil will find expression in the arts. Will the literature of this depression match the quality of that created in the 1930s? Quartet Books were intending to publish James Palumbo’s startling first novel later in the year, but our belief in its relevance to these troubled times convinces us this Swiftian fable of excess should be published as soon as possible.

Impossible to précis its narrative, Palumbo’s story weaves and curves its way around the adventures of Tomas, a young man on the make in a world of wealth, privilege and corruption. Like Candide and Gulliver before him, Tomas’s adventures will startle the reader’s imagination, yet linger in her mind. What seems grotesque, even impossible, has already happened …

For excess of imagination, passion, outrage, death and love, greed and vice, often provide a clearer view of life.