MAXWELL'S DEMON

In 2007 Steven Hall published The Raw Shark Texts, a book universally praised and credited with being the start of a new literary genre, "slipstream". Quite why it took the Granta Best Young British Novelist 14 years to make his triumphant return is known only to him, but Maxwell's Demon, a powerful and unusual text that "reads like a deluge" has been well worth the wait. It centres around the plight of Thomas Quinn from Hull, a failed novelist who is eking out a living writing short stories and audio scripts for others, while his wife is working on a remote island on the other side of the world. Both bills and washing up are piling up and the world seems to be rushing headlong into imminent collapse, then he receives a voicemail from his father Stanley, a man who has been dead for seven years. Thomas's relationship with his father, a world-famous writer, had always been troubled, not least because Stanley favoured his assistant/acolyte Andrew Black over his own son. Black went on to write a million-seller book but then completely disappeared and, as strange things begin to happen in his life, Thomas cannot help but wonder whether it is Black who is manipulating his world from behind the scenes, especially when a manuscript of Maxwell's Demon, apparently Black's second book, lands in his lap... Truly brilliant, this wildly entertaining and brain-teasing mystery looks behind the mask of order we place on our world when things loom chaotic and out of our control - a literary masterpiece and a joy to read. 339pp.