Man-Eating Typewriter

Shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize 2023

Author: Richard Milward

Paperback

An experimental novel set in the 1960s that truly embraces the avant-garde - and is, itself a coded history of the 20th century avant-garde from oulipo to auto-destructive art - from the highly acclaimed author of APPLES

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Summary

Description

'A major talent' Irvine Welsh

'Remarkable, beautiful, magic. Like Ulysses for those who can't cope with reading Ulysses' Paolo Hewitt

'We're all in the gutter but some of us are ogling the sparkles.'

Set at the fag-end of the 1960s and framed as a novel within a novel published by a seedy London purveyor of pulp fiction, MAN-EATING TYPEWRITER is a homage to the avant-garde counterculture of the 20th century. Told in Polari, it is the story of an anarchist named Raymond Novak and his plan to commit a 'fantabulosa crime' in 276 days that will revolt the world. A surrealistic odyssey that stretches from occupied Paris to the cruise-liner SS Unmentionable to lawless Tangier before settling in Swinging London, the book casts Novak as an agitator and freedom fighter - but, as his memoirs become more and more threatening, his publishers find themselves far more involved in his violent personality cult than they ever intended.

Constructed like a hallucinogenic cocktail of A Clockwork Orange, Pale Fire and Jean Genet's jailbird fantasies, MAN-EATING TYPEWRITER is an act of seductive sedition by a writer with unfathomable literary talent and boldness. Wild, transgressive, erotic and resolutely uncompromising, this marks the return of a writer who is out there on an island of his own making; a book that will be talked about, celebrated and puzzled over for decades.

Critic Reviews

Single-handedly proving the novel isn't dead, Milward breathes new life into the form in this erudite, witty yet immaculately crafted, romp of a book -- Ali Millar, author of THE LAST DAYS
Man-Eating Typewriter is truly extraordinary: as if Mervyn Peake and Kenneth Williams wrote a book with William Burroughs -- Michael Bracewell, author of UNFINISHED BUSINESS
Remarkable, beautiful, magic. Like Ulysses for those who can't cope with reading Ulysses -- Paolo Hewitt
Outrageous, audacious and shameless, Man-Eating Typewriter is a brilliantly constructed murderous lark. Like A Clockwork Orange adapted by John Waters at his most gleeful -- John Higgs, author of LOVE AND LET DIE
I love this book, this jaw-dropping, obsessive love-letter to the alchemy of the word -- David Keenan, author of INDUSTRY OF MAGIC AND LIGHT
It doesn't get more exciting. In literary terms, he's right up there with the best this country has to offer -- Rupert Thomson
A mind-bending performance that unspools in flavoursome Polari over much of its pages. Intricate, hilarious, as grossly excessive as the milieu it depicts, the novel often reads as if Jean Genet and Vladimir Nabokov had joined the screenwriting team of the Carry On films -- Boyd Tonkin Financial Times
Man-Eating Typewriter is a disgusting and depraved book, awash with orgies, drug abuse, bestiality (one scene gives appalling new meaning to the expression "he's sleeping with the fishes"), casual violence, cross-dressing, castration, comically unconventional sexual assaults, and lovingly described abnormal bowel movements. I thoroughly enjoyed it Daily Telegraph
An exhibition of literary verve as well as a probing examination of morality within a sick society, Man-Eating Typewriter is a phenomenal achievement Literary Review
The linguistic invention borders on the dazzling, the potted social history drops its names with wit and verve, and the whole thing is both laugh-out-loud funny and authentically disgusting Guardian
This magnificent, unhinged book is best described by one of its own characters - it's a beautiful fucking heinous masterpiece Joe Dunthorne

About the Author

Richard Milward was born in Middlesbrough in 1984. His cult debut Apples was published in 2007 when Richard was twenty-two years old, followed by Ten Storey Love Song in 2009 and Kimberly's Capital Punishment in 2012. Apples was shortlisted for The South Bank Show/Times Breakthrough Award 2008, Ten Storey Love Song was chosen as one of Waterstones New Voices 2009, and Kimberly's Capital Punishment was picked as Time Out Book of the Week in 2012. Both Apples and Ten Storey Love Song were adapted for the stage, winning awards at the Edinburgh Fringe.