The Fat of Fed Beasts

By Guy Ware

‘Fleshing out the shadowy metaphysical hints of Beckett’s novels, this intellectual romp is the best debut I have read in years’ Nicholas Lezard, The Guardian

Monday lunchtime: a bank is being robbed. The gunmen tell everyone to get down on the floor, but an old man refuses. Behind him in the queue is Rada Kalenkova, an investigator for the Office of Assessment, recording everything she sees. Shots are fired and a woman is killed. Or maybe two. But Rada ignores the murders and pursues the old man instead.

Nothing about the robbery or the putative killings makes sense. The robbers might be police. The bank manager denies anyone was hurt, despite the blood on the walls. Every subsequent enquiry leads towards Edward Likker, a renowned fixer. But Likker is dead.

The Fat of Fed Beasts is an ambitious literary mix of existential uncertainty, murder, bureaucracy, unreliable father figures and disaffected policemen. It asks why we do what we do, whether it matters, and what, if anything, our lives are worth. And it’s funny.

‘Ware has an uncluttered prose style and a willingness to stretch the boundaries of fiction. His sensibility is finely tuned to those grey areas of experience where identities shift, where people forget who they really are. No other writer springs to mind as a ready comparison to Ware: already he has defined a unique thematic territory.’ Aiden O’Reilly, The Short Review

• Language: English
• Publisher: Salt
• Release date: Apr 16, 2015
• ISBN: 9781784630478

Guy Ware

Guy Ware is a critically-acclaimed novelist and short story writer. His work has been listed for many awards, including the Frank O’Connor International, Edge Hill and London Short Story Prize, which he won in 2018. Our Island Story is his fifth novel. Guy was born in Northampton, grew up in the Fens and lives in southeast London.