The Coincidence Engine - Hardcover

Leith, Sam

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1444809067 ISBN 13: 9781444809060

Publisher: Ulverscroft Ltd, 2011

Synopsis

A hurricane sweeps off the Gulf of Mexico and in the back-country of Alabama, assembles a passenger jet out of old bean-cans and junkyard waste. An eccentric mathematician vanishes in the French Pyrenees. And the thuggish operatives of a multi-national arms conglomerate close in on Alex Smart - a harmless Cambridge postgraduate who has set off to ask his American girlfriend to marry him. At the Directorate of the Extremely Improbable - an organisation so secret, many of its operatives aren't a hundred percent sure it exists - Red Queen takes an interest. What ensues is a chaotic chase across an imaginary America, haunted by madness, murder, mistaken identity, and vast amounts of unhealthy, but delicious snacks. The Coincidence Engine exists. And it has started to work

About this title

Review

'A tremendous novel - droll, savvy, original. An invigorating blast of fiction' (William Boyd)

'I couldn't stop reading Sam Leith's comic, paranoid romp across America. It's Philip K. Dick meets Evelyn Waugh in a fast-paced satire ... I loved its twists and turns and its final, wonderful revelation. If, that is, it was a final revelation...' (Michael Moorcock)

'He is a humorist, but, much more than that, a realist; a philosopher, but much more a brilliant reporter. His prose reminds me of the non-experimental James Joyce' (Bevis Hillier, Spectator)

***** Wildly imaginative, this book rips along (The Lady)

Book Description

Shortlisted for the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction 2011

Edition details

• Publisher: Ulverscroft Ltd
• Publication date: 2011
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1444809067
• ISBN 13: 9781444809060
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 360