Life is sweet for would-be bohemian Artie Conville. Safe at the helm of his subsidised magazine - with a cosy office paid for by the tax-payer - he's content to drift along quoting poetry, lingering over long lunches and flirting with the lovely Rosie McCann. The main thing is to keep the real world - of nine-to-five jobs, mortgages and political violence - at bay. So when his cushy number is threatened, Artie hatches a cunning plan to keep the funds coming in. But events quickly spiral out of control and before long he is up to his ears in a bizarre fraud. Can he avert disaster? Will he get the girl? With a cast of characters that includes a gun-toting playwright, a jealous police chief, a drunken actor and a giant white rabbit, this is a rich and riotous tale about coming-of-age in 1980s Belfast; a novel that is by turns darkly ironic and laugh-out-loud funny.

'Terrific - very funny, acutely sharp.' Simon Hoggart, The Guardian

Kevin Smith is from County Down in Northern Ireland. A former journalist, he has worked in newspapers, radio, and newswires, and was for a number of years a foreign correspondent in Eastern Europe. He lives in Dublin with his wife and two children.