An Artist and a Magician

(Paperback, Main)

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'Black comedy at its most lurid, refined, and raffish... Wilbur George has made court-jester parasitism into an art form: four creepy but wealthy fellow expatriates (who hate each other) contribute to the upkeep of his Roman villa and matchless dinner parties. And when ancient, horrid Pam decides to stop contributing, she dies - moments after taking tea with Wilbur... the three surviving patrons congratulate him on a good clean kill, praise which vain Wilbur can't quite bring himself to deny...' Kirkus Reviews 'It is Hugh Fleetwood's great ability as a novelist to analyse the world of the rich, to test it with violence and to subtly probe its corruption.' Peter Ackroyd, Spectator'Artistically successful and enthralling... It shimmers for a long time in the memory's eye.' Glasgow Herald'Extremely readable and suitably chilling.' Jeremy Lewis, Times

Author Bio

Hugh Fleetwood was born in Chichester, Sussex, in 1944. Aged 21 he moved to Italy and lived there for fourteen years, during which time he exhibited his paintings and wrote a number of novels and story collections, originally published by Hamish Hamilton, beginning with A Painter of Flowers (1972). His second novel, The Girl Who Passed for Normal (1973), won the John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize. His fifth, The Order of Death (1977), was adapted into a 1983 film starring Harvey Keitel and John Lydon. In 1978 he published his first collection of short stories, The Beast. Subsequent collections have included Fictional Lives (1980) and The Man Who Went Down With His Ship (1988). He currently lives in London, and continues to work both as writer and painter.