Serenity House

(, Main)

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Description

Shortlisted for the 1992 Booker Prize, Serenity House is 'superb . . . Hope employs a blend of devastating satire and gruesome humour to counterpoint the banal with the fantastic, and does so to dazzling effect.' IndependentMax Montfalcon lay in bed and tried to remember how many people he had killed . . .Old Max, the genial giant of Serenity House, north London's 'Premier Eventide Refuge', might have been left to die in peace. But his son-in-law Albert, an MP with a special interest in the War Crimes Bill, has other ideas. Then Jack arrives. An all-American boy who survives on a diet of video nasties and Chinese takeaways. Max is haunted by dreams of the Holocaust. And the occupants of Serenity House are haunted by Jack . . .

Reviews

"Shortlisted for the 1992 Booker Prize, Serenity House is 'superb... Hope employs a blend of devastating satire and gruesome humour to counterpoint the banal with the fantastic, and does so to dazzling effect.' Independent 'Brilliantly constructed and paced, with not a word to spare or a scene which does not move the narrative forward... only the very innocent escape his scathing wit.' Literary Review 'It is the crispness of wit, the keenness of observation, and the gravity-defying ability to link apparent opposites that render this vision at once so bright and so alarming.' Financial Times 'Hope has set guidelines for our consciences to follow, reminded us with black humour of the horror and the pity that must never be allowed to fade.' Sunday Times"

Author Bio

Christopher Hope was born in Johannesburg in 1944. He is the author of nine novels and one collection of short stories, including Kruger's Alp, which won the Whitbread Prize for Fiction, Serenity House, which was shortlisted for the 1992 Booker Prize, and My Mother's Lovers, published by Atlantic Books in 2006 to great acclaim. He is also a poet and playwright and author of the celebrated memoir White Boy Running (1988).