All My Precious Madness
All My Precious Madness is a story of a man at odds with the world. A man who wants to escape his violent past but who - most emphatically - repeats it.
Henry Nash has hauled his way from a working class childhood in Bradford, through an undergraduate degree at Oxford, and into adulthood and an academic elite. But still, he can't escape his anger. As the world - and men in particular - continues to disappoint him, so does his rage grow in momentum, until it becomes almost rapturous.
And lethal.
A savagely funny novel that disdains moral conventions, All My Precious Madness is also a work of deep empathy - even when that empathy means understanding the darkest parts of humanity. It is, as Terry Eagleton says, 'a wonderfully stylish, intelligent piece of work' - and one of the most electric debuts in recent years.
About the author
Mark Bowles grew up between Bradford and Leeds, and went on to study at Liverpool and Oxford Universities. He currently lives in London with his wife and two small children.
Judge Lola Seaton on All My Precious Madness
"Mark Bowles’s All My Precious Madness is an exhilaratingly intelligent, hilariously foul-mouthed monologue: partly a crankish rant, railing violently – and digressively – against the crushing idiocies of contemporary life, partly an affecting Bildungsroman, centred on the narrator’s relationship with their father.
"At once crackling with spontaneity and beautifully controlled, alternating between a curmudgeon’s uproarious disgust and a child’s poignant wonder, Bowles’s novel is a wonderful piece of writing which you will be sorry to finish."