Author(s): Adam Thirlwell

Fiction

One of the most talked about first novels of 2003, an extraordinary tour de force by a miraculously gifted young author. Winner of a Betty Trask Award Politics is not about politics. It is a comedy about everything else. Politics explores crucial domestic problems of sexual etiquette. What should the sleeping arrangements be in a menage-a-trois? Is it polite to read while two people have sex beside you? Is it permissible to be jealous? If you have eczema, should you complain that undinism can be painful? It also tells the story of a father and daughter. And at the same time, it is about Milan Kundera, blow jobs, Chairman Mao's personal hygiene, Jewishness, half-Jewishness, goodness, Bollywood, selfishness, Hitler's sexual fetishes, holidays, shopping trips, premature ejaculation, the Queen Mother, thrush, Stalin on the phone, politeness, Antonio Gramsci's theory of hegemony, and pink fluffy handcuffs. Politics is a comedy about kindness. Tender, shocking, original, Politics is the most distinctive debut since Martin Amis's The Rachel Papers.