<p><b>"Impossibly ingenious, unabashedly intelligent, read-the-whole-page-again funny and engaged with the great questions of our times... [This] is the answer to the question of what a seriously ...
<p><b>"Impossibly ingenious, unabashedly intelligent, read-the-whole-page-again funny and engaged with the great questions of our times... [This] is the answer to the question of what a seriously talented contemporary novelist should be writing." <i>Observer</i></b>
<b>A comic masterpiece about love, art, greed and the banking crisis, from the author of <i>Skippy Dies</i></b>
What links the Investment Bank of Torabundo, www.myhotswaitress.com (yes, <i>hots</i> with an s, don't ask), an art heist, a novel called For the Love of a Clown, a four-year-old boy named after TV detective Remington Steele, a lonely French banker, a tiny Pacific island, and a pest control business run by an ex-KGB man? You guessed it . . .</p> <p><i>The Mark and the Void</i> is Paul Murray's madcap new novel of institutional folly, following the success of his wildly original breakout hit, <i>Skippy Dies</i>. While marooned at his banking job in the bewilderingly damp and insular realm known as Ireland, Claude Martingale is approached by a down-on-his-luck author, Paul, looking for his next great subject. Claude finds that his life gets steadily more exciting under Paul's fictionalizing influence; he even falls in love with a beautiful waitress. But Paul's plan is not what it seems-and neither is Claude's employer, the Bank of Torabundo, which inflates through dodgy takeovers and derivatives-trading until-well, you can probably guess how that shakes out.</p> <p><i>The Mark and the Void</i> is a stirring examination of the deceptions carried out in the names of art, love and commerce - and is also probably the funniest novel ever written about a financial crisis.</p>