Derangements ( Pb )

By the author of Or the Day Seizes You, short-listed for the Hutch Crossword Book Award 2006Raj Chakraborti, internationally renowned novelist and commentator, beloved and controversial in equal measure, reviled and resurrected periodically for his ever-shifting opinions, has disappeared from public view. What’s worse, the police want to question him about a murder; he was the last person to have met the young journalist who was later discovered dead on her doorstep. Then his editor receives a package of papers in which Raj claims to explain his part in recent events and his reasons for not surfacing. The material includes chapters from his latest work of fiction about a serial killer turned hired assassin. Is Raj right to believe that he is being hunted, or is it his past that has finally borne down to haunt him? Where does life leave the larger-than-life, and how does power destroy its pursuers? At once a multi-layered mystery, a novel of ideas, a satire exploring the place of the writer within contemporary life, and a love story that unfolds in three parts, Derangements presents a world where you have to discern the shadows from the ghosts, the paranoia from the persecution, and the fiction from the actual.’A writer so promising and committed that one suspects he cannot help doing too many things too well.’ -The Statesman