Men in Space [Hardcover]

'McCarthy's prose is precise and unpretentious' The Independent 'A writer with ideas and talent' The Guardian

"A writer with ideas and talent."

"I, for one, am glad that the independent publishing house Alma Books is brave enough to back such idiosyncratic work."

"Men in Space is a compelling and imaginative philosophical novel"

"a confident and intelligent meditation on failed flights of transcendence."

Set in a Central Europe rapidly fragmenting after the fall of Communism, Men in Space follows a cast of dissolute Bohemians, political refugees, a football referee, a disorientated police agent and a stranded astronaut as they chase a stolen icon painting from Sofia to Prague and onwards. The icon s melancholy orbit is reflected in the various characters ellipses and near misses as they career vertiginously through all kinds of space: physical, political, emotional and metaphysical. What emerges is a vision of humanity adrift in history, and a world in a state of disintegration. Following the huge critical success of Remainder, McCarthy s first novel, Men in Space confirms him as one of the most original and promising voices in English fiction today.

Tom McCarthy was born in 1969 and lives in London. He is known for the reports, manifestos and media interventions he has made as General Secretary of the International Necronautical Society (INS), a semi-fictitious avant-garde network. His first novel Remainder was published by Alma in 2006.

Here's Anton Markov, sitting at a table, runnning his finger
round a saucer's rim as he watches his compatriot Koulin stride across the
Malostranka Kavarna's floor. Koulin takes bouncy, elastic steps. He swings
his arms and hips round chairs and tables. He turns like an ice skater to
glide backwards for two paces as he skirts around the waitress, a girl of
twenty-odd. Wall-mounted mirrors, one on either side of the door from which
he's just emerged, the door that leads off the toilets, render the event in
triplicate: three Koulins - front, left profile and right profile, like in
police mugshots. There are three waitresses too, three sets of background
customers. Looking at the multiplying scene, Anton recalls his refereeing
days in Bulgaria: the trick was to see all the near-identical shirts,
repeated runs, sudden departures, switches and loop-backs as one single
movement, parts of a modulating system which you had to watch as though
from outside, or above, or somewhere else.
"So anyway," says
Koulin, sliding back into his chair and stretching his arm out across the
radiator behind him, "this Yugoslavian's place is in Prague Four, by
Nusle. He lives on the fourth floor. Me and Milachkov thought we'd scare
him by saying we'd throw him out of the window. So we turn up there and
it's him that opens the door to us, in a towel-robe. It must be about 10
a.m. Mila knocks him straight down and we pick him up, one of us at either
end, and carry him towards the window. But while we're lugging him there,
this girl walks in out of the bedroom. And guess what?"
His eyes beam
across the table, pink-flushed with excitement.
"What?" asks
Anton.
"She's naked," Koulin tells him. "Really lovely body.
Brown hair down to her back. Small round tits. When she sees us she starts
crying and screaming 'Oh don't hurt him! Please don't hurt him!' I start to
explain that we don't want to hurt him but he owes Ili money for the
cigarettes he's selling on his patch, but she just cries and screams some
more. The Yugoslavian's all calm because he's dazed from Mila's punch, so
he's no problem, but this girl is kicking up a storm. And then..." He
shifts his arm. "This bit is kind of difficult to explain exactly as it
happened...Well, she pissed herself. But what I noticed is a kind of
dribble: it was more like a bag had burst just on the inside of her leg. A
bag that wasn't there before. Or like when someone throws a water ballon,
you know, and it explodes. One solid mass. At least, it was solid till it
hit the floor, one of those criss-cross floors, all wood, what do they call
them?..."
"Parquet. Parquetry."
"Right: till it hit the
parquetry. Then it it broke. Really bizarre. Because she was naked there
was nothing to interrupt its fall. And this girl, this beautiful naked girl
just stood above it screaming. I don't know if she'd even noticed what
she'd just done..."
Did Koulin tell a similar story about Anton, their
first meeting? Did he slide into a similar chair - perhaps this very one -
and, stretching his arm across the radiator, say to his friend Milachkov:
"So there's me and Janachkov, and Jana's itching to break this guy's
finger, got his finger in his hand, this short, smart-ass guy, maybe Jewish
with the face he has. And Ili's there too, and he starts explaining to the
guy what he's done wrong, importing all that pop and selling it bang in the
middle of Prague without going through us, or anyone else for that
matter..."