Noughties

By BEN MASTERS

30 March 2012 | RRP$30.00 | Paperback | Hamish Hamilton

Linguistically dazzling, funny and poignant: Martin Amis meets the Arctic Monkeys in the most entertaining debut of 2012.

Eliot Lamb has dreaded this moment for the past three  years of his life: the final night of university… Gathered with his mates in the King’s Arms, he begins the ultimate descent – Pub, Bar, Club. Staring into the foam of his first pint, he knows that before the night reaches its climactic conclusion on the sweaty dance-floor of Filth, he must solve the dilemma of his knotty love-life, risk his closest friendship, face up to a tragic secret, and deal with the fact that he hasn’t a clue what to do with the rest of his life. And with the entire literary canon running wild in his imagination and a series of ominous text messages lighting up his mobile phone, things aren’t going to be easy.

Noughties is an inventive and lyrical comic novel about the highs and lows of modern university life. Eliot may know a lot about Renaissance poetry, the post-modern novel, French literary theory and how to get hammered at a highly competitive rate, but he is fast realising that adulthood beckons, and it’s going to be asking a lot more of him than that.

A twenty-first century Brideshead Revisited with checked shirts and an indie soundtrack, Noughties reveals the truth about the lives of normal students at an elite university.

About the Author

Ben Masters is twenty-five years old. He was born in Northampton and studied English at Oxford University. He is currently working on a Ph.D. at Cambridge University. Noughties is his first novel.