Haunted

Haunted is a novel made up of stories: twenty-three of the most horrifying, hilarious, mind-blowing, stomach-churning tales you'll ever encounter. They are told by the people who have all answered an ad headlined 'Artists Retreat: Abandon your life for three months'. They are led to believe that here they will leave behind all the distractions of 'real life' that are keeping them from creating the masterpiece that is in them. But 'here' turns out to be a cavernous and ornate old theatre where they are utterly isolated from the outside world - and where heat and power and, most importantly, food are in increasingly short supply. And the more desperate the circumstances become, the more desperate the stories they tell - and the more devious their machinations to make themselves the hero of the inevitable play/movie/non-fiction blockbuster that will certainly be made from their plight.

Review: By turns nauseating, darkly funny and brutally graphic * Observer *

A triumph... A novel of exceptional originality... Wonderful... A remarkable book, the most original work of fiction this year * Guardian *

An immensely skilful writer * Daily Telegraph *

Deeply satirical, brutal and provocative, Haunted is harshly compulsive, eye-bleeding stuff * I-D *

I laughed until my ribs ached -- Simon Shaw * Daily Mail *