Author(s): Barry Unsworth

Special Order

Unable to work on his novel about Liverpool's slave trade, Benson is teaching creative writing and wandering the city. The pupils who bring him their fantasies are a sad, dispossessed group with varying degrees of literary talent. Caught up in a series of bizarre events, Benson nevertheless finds his own imagination sparked by an encounter with two old army colleagues: Thompson, down-and-out and homeless; and Slater, a fabulously wealthy entrepreneur. In trying to heal old wounds, Benson unleashes a plan that just may blow up in his face. "There is a violent resolution to this obsessive and provocative novel that examines the abscesses and abysses beneath the violence of urban life and offers a quixotic personal answer." - The Times [London] "Fine descriptive writing and spirited humanity." - The Guardian Published for the first time in the United States Booker Prize-winning author of Sacred Hunger