An epochal saga from the acclaimed author of Remainder, C takes place in the early years of the twentieth century and ranges from western England to Europe to North Africa.

Serge Carrefax spends his childhood at Versoie House, where his father teaches deaf children to speak when he's not experimenting with wireless telegraphy. Sophie, Serge's sister and only connection to the world at large, takes outrageous liberties with Serge's young body — which may explain the unusual sexual predilections that haunt him for the rest of his life. After recuperating from a mysterious illness at a Bohemian spa, Serge serves in World War I as a radio operator. C culminates in a bizarre scene in an Egyptian catacomb where all Serge's paths and relationships at last converge.

Tom McCarthy's mesmerizing, often hilarious accomplishment effortlessly blends the generational breadth of Ian McEwan with the postmodern wit of Thomas Pynchon and marks a writer rapidly becoming one of the most significant and original voices of his generation.

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FINALIST 2010 - Man Booker Prize

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"A narrative of energy, invention and intelligence… A novel for our times: refreshingly different, intellectually acute and strikingly enjoyable."
—Telegraph

"The delights of C arise from its imaginative energy and bursts of mesmerising lyrical prose."
—New Statesman

"Unquestionably brilliant… a genuinely exciting and spookily beautiful book, a new kind of joy."
—Neel Mukherjee, The Times

"C is clever, confident, coy - and cryptic."
—The Wall Street Journal

"Tom McCarthy has written an avant-garde masterpiece - a sprawling cryptogram - in the guise of an epic, coming-of-age period piece."
—Los Angeles Times

"Tour de force… an intellectually provocative novel that unfurls like a brooding, phosphorescent dream."
—The New York Times Book Review

"Unclassifiably brilliant… Each chapter of McCarthy's tour de force is a cryptic, ornate puzzle box."
—Publishers Weekly

"McCarthy is one of the most intelligent and talented novelists of our generation."
—The Scotsman

"A modern novel with contemporary, even fashionable, concerns. Blessedly, though, it is also a traditional novel in that it does not disdain the necessity to engage the reader."
—The Herald

"McCarthy is a talented and intelligent novelist… The near-Joycean scale and density of all this is truly impressive, as is McCarthy's ability to fold it into a cleanly constructed narrative."
—The Guardian

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TOM McCARTHY was born in 1969 and lives in London. He is known in the art world 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 was Remainder and, in 2006, he published Tintin and the Secret of Literature.

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