Mark Bowles – författare

ALL MY PRECIOUS MADNESS is the story of a man at odds with the world. A man who wants to escape his violent past but instead - most emphatically repeats it. Henry Nash has hauled his way from a working class childhood in Bradford, through an undergraduate degree at Oxford, and into adulthood and an academic elite. But still, he can't escape his anger. As the world - and men in particular - continues to disappoint him, so does his rage grow in momentum until it becomes almost rapturous. And lethal. A savagely funny novel that disdains literary and moral conventions, All My Precious Madness is also a work of deep empathy even if when that also means understanding the darkest parts of humanity. It is, as critic Stephen Mitchelmore says, the book for everyone who longs for 'an English Bernhard' - and to read one of the most electric debuts of the last decade.

Told as a series of journal entries that move backwards in time, How Do People Stay The Same follows the life of Patrick Boyd - from the present-day contentment of family life and back to a darker, lonelier childhood. How Do People Stay The Same lays all of Patrick's experience before us, with the challenges of work, housing and all the other pinpricks of existence jostling with his complex inner world. It reveals a fragile man ground down by the world around him - but who might just be able to change and might just have the hope of a brighter future. Featuring the exquisite prose and lacerating wit that readers loved so much in All My Precious Madness, How Do People Stay The Same is also a deeply tender project - an exploration of family, childhood, love, and the personal bonds that tie us together.