Timoleon Vieta Come Home [Paperback]

'The best new writer in Britain.'

One of '5 Best Debuts for 2003'

'Very funny and very sharp with crushingly wicked moments.'

'Is there a more innovative... readable writer than Rhodes working in Britain today?'

'Funny, fantastic and strangely profound.'

Cockroft, a composer and socialite in the mode of Quentin Crisp, lives in self-imposed exile and fantasises of true love and extravagant suicides. Rattling about his dilapidated farmhouse in the Italian countryside, subsisting on a trickle of royalties from past successes, his only constant source of company is the ever loyal Timoleon Vieta - a mongrel with the most beautiful eyes. When a handsome but surly individual - known only as The Bosnian - arrives on the scene, the strong bond between Cockroft and Timoleon is put under strain. Cockroft, forced into a choice between the two, abandons Timoleon outside Rome's Coliseum ...from where the dog begins the long journey home ...a journey of broken hearts, broken minds and broken spirits. In a tragicomic work of macabre beauty, Rhodes amuses and moves in equal measure. One of Britain's most promising and original young writers has produced a novel of unexpected twists and inspiring humanity.

DAN RHODES was born in 1972 in Purley and took a course on creative writing at the University of Glamorgan where he was tutored by Helen Dunmore. From the graduation in 1995 he taught in Saigon and worked at various times at his parents' pub and on a fruit and vegetable farm.