The Ballad Of Lee Cotton [Paperback]

Written with all the imaginative gusto of a heavy-weight novelist (FT MAGAZINE )

Exuberant (SUNDAY TELEGRAPH )

Wildly entertaining (DAILY MAIL )

An exuberant, joyful ride. Outrageously funny, it combines high farce with biting satire (INDEPENDENT )

'Written with all the imaginative gusto of a heavy-weight novelist'

‘wonderfully written, heart-stoppingly involving … you’re unlikely to read a more effervescent, more uplifting, more original novel this year’

‘What is most delightful about this book is the sheer exuberance of its electric, refreshingly inventive prose’

A brilliant, funny novel about survival and identity in the tradition of Jeff Eugenides' MIDDLESEX.

‘A wildly entertaining read’

'The chief glory of the book is the richly authentic voice which Christopher Wilson has found for his likeable hero'

‘Christopher Wilson should be commended’ --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

'The Ballad of Lee Cotton is destined for prizes. It has a zany, freewheeling brilliance' --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From his Icelandic father Lee Cotton gets his marble skin and blue eyes. From his mixed-race mother he gains his black identity. From his Mambo grandmother he inherits forebodings about his future. It's a combination that sets Lee apart from the other black kids growing up in Eureka, Mississippi. It marks Lee out as slightly odd. And very white. If childhood was confusing, adolescence proves life changing when Lee falls in love with the sublime Angelina. It's also life threatening: Angel's father is a freelance shooter for the Klan, who doesn't take kindly to his daughter's boyfriend. An act of appalling violence leaves Lee far from home with a new identity, a draft card, a memory that operates in flashback and a mental illness that makes him a sort of genius. He also has a reputation, back home, for being dead. Nobody (except possibly his grandmother) could envisage that Lee's rebirth is a headstart and not a handicap. His role in a quite remarkable journey through life will be to transform others as he has transformed himself...

Christopher Wilson has been longlisted for The Booker Prize (BLUEGLASS) and shortlisted for the Whitbread Novel Award (MISCHIEF). He is a semiotician (advises companies on the language they use to advertise themselves). He did a PHD on jokes at the LSE.