The Adulterants

From the wickedly funny author of Submarine comes a hilarious new tragicomedy - a screwball tale of millennial angst, pre-midlife crises and one man's valiant quest to come of age in his thirties. 
 
'Blisteringly funny and brimming with caustic charm - a joyous diagnosis of our modern ills that made me laugh out loud even when it was breaking my heart' Paul Murray, author of Skippy Dies 
 
Ray is not a bad guy. He mostly did not cheat on his heavily pregnant wife. He only sometimes despises every one of his friends. His career as a freelance tech journalist is dismal but he dreams of making a difference one day. But Ray is about to learn that his special talent is for making things worse. 
 
Brace yourself for an encounter with the modern everyman. Enter the world of ironic misanthropy and semi-ironic underachievement, of competitively sensitive men, catastrophic open marriages, and lots of Internet righteousness. With lacerating wit and wry affection, Joe Dunthorne dissects the urban millennial psyche of a man too old to be an actual millennial. 
 
'Every lost generation needs its memorial and now at last we have The Adulterants. It's very sad and very funny and written with an innocence that in fact is diabolical' Adam Thirlwell, author of Lurid and Cute

There is a chortle-inducing moment on almost every page... Dunthorne is not only one of contemporary fiction's funniest voices but also one of its most generous and perceptive

Dunthorne is a superbly economical writer... He is also properly funny. There are several snort-through-your-nose moments. But throughout, the novel's comedy is always balanced by insight and poignancy

The Adulterants is thrust-the-book-at-the-person-next-to-you hilarious

Joe Dunthorne is one of our best young writers

Bristles with a deliciously sour, dyspeptic humour and is excellent at skewering the lifestyle habits of a liberal-minded middle-class

Perfectly formed... a pin-sharp skewering of a certain type of modern urban thirtysomething male, trapped in a protracted adolescent state. It's one not to be missed

The Adulterants, from its punning title onwards, is brilliantly knowing about its knowingness. It knows the only way we'll tolerate a narrator as annoying as Ray is to punish him for the very virtues that make him a good narrator - nosiness and eloquence

A sharp satire of contemporary London and the modern urban male

Blisteringly funny and brimming with caustic charm - a joyous diagnosis of our modern ills that made me laugh out loud even when it was breaking my heart

Dark, beautifully wry, and side-splittingly excruciating, The Adulterants is a triumph of voice and vision

A tale of modern manhood, full of malaise, melancholy and wryly funny observations

A richly illuminating comedy of disappointment, uproarious and mournful, that places Joe Dunthorne triumphantly in the tradition of Evelyn Waugh and (that other Swansea resident) Kingsley Amis. A deft, brilliant, surprising joyride

Joe Dunthorne's new book is a pleasure - I was very fortunate to get to read his book Submarine early and reading this one was equally thrilling. I owe him a great deal ( but refuse to repay him)

Smartly written, The Adulterants riffs on London's housing crisis, competitively sensitive men and social media with wry insight

Joe Dunthorne was born and brought up in Swansea. He is the author of three novels and one collection of poetry, including Submarine, which has been translated into fifteen languages and made into an acclaimed film directed by Richard Ayoade, and Wild Abandon, which won the 2012 Encore Award. Children of Radium is his first work of non-fiction. He lives in London. 
 
www.joedunthorne.com

Ray's life is not going to plan. He's just cheated on his heavily pregnant wife. He secretly despises all of his friends. His career as a freelance tech journalist is dismal and he spends his afternoons churning out listicles in his pants. But Ray is about to learn that no matter how low you sink, things can always get worse... 
 
The Adulterants is an uproarious tale of competitively sensitive men and catastrophic open marriages, riots on the streets of London and Internet righteousness, and one man's valiant quest to come of age in his thirties. With lacerating wit and wry affection, Joe Dunthorne dissects the urban millennial psyche of a man too old to be an actual millennial.

Wild Abandon

Wild Abandon is Joe Dunthorne's outrageously funny novel of life in a Welsh commune. 
 
Kate and Albert, sister and brother, are not yet the last two human beings on earth, but Albert has high hopes. The secluded communal farm they grew up on is - after twenty years - disintegrating, along with their parents' marriage. They both try to escape: Kate, at seventeen, to suburbia and Albert, at eleven, into preparations for the end of the world. 
 
However, Don, the group's leader and their father, is convinced he can save everything, if only he can bring his followers into the modern age. How? By force of personality, strict self-sufficiency and a rave with a 10k soundsystem. Understandably, Albert and Kate have other ideas . . . 
 
 
 
'Populated by flawed, occasionally exasperating, lovable and, above all, thoroughly imagined characters, Wild Abandon is about what happens to children when parents become consumed by their beliefs . . . A terrific novel' Nick Hornby, Guardian, 'Books of the Year' 
 
'A joy. Warm, funny, clever' Sunday Times 
 
'An engaging, emotionally stimulating, chuckle-out-loud read' Time Out 
 
'Occupying a terrain that lies between the very British humour of Jonathan Coe and the zeitgeisty ambition of Douglas Coupland . . . insightful comic writing . . . that manages to be both tender and biting' Independent on Sunday 
 
'A creation of some genius. Dunthorne is a naturally comic writer' Daily Telegraph 
 
'Just as funny and acutely perceptive [as] Submarine' Independent 
 
 
Joe Dunthorne was born and brought up in Swansea. He is the author of Submarine, which has been translated into fifteen languages and made into an acclaimed film directed by Richard Ayoade, and Wild Abandon, which won the 2012 Encore Award. His debut poetry pamphlet was published by Faber and Faber. He lives in London. 
 
www.joedunthorne.com

An engaging, emotionally stimulating, chuckle-out-loud read

A creation of some genius. Dunthorne is a naturally comic writer

Just as funny and acutely perceptive [as] Submarine

Occupying a terrain that lies between the very British humour of Jonathan Coe and the zeitgeisty ambition of Douglas Coupland . . . insightful comic writing . . . that manages to be both tender and biting

The last day on earth is coming. Bring your own booze. 
 
Kate and Albert, sister and brother, are not yet the last two human beings on earth, but Albert has high hopes. The secluded communal farm they grew up on is - after twenty years - disintegrating, along with their parents' marriage. They both try to escape: Kate, at seventeen, to suburbia and Albert, at eleven, into preparations for the end of the world. 
 
However, Don, the group's leader and their father, is convinced he can save everything, if only he can bring his followers into the modern age. How? By force of personality, strict self-sufficiency and a rave with a 10k soundsystem. Understandably, Albert and Kate have other ideas . . .

A Buried Inheritance

Children of Radium

Off-beat, irreverent and subversive – a Jewish family memoir about convenient delusions and unsayable truths, from the acclaimed author of the cult classic novel, Submarine 
'A gripping story of family secrets and chemical warfare [and] a tale of one writer’s search for a reliable past... Joe Dunthorne has written a contemporary classic' Andrew O'Hagan 
 
 Joe Dunthorne had always wanted to write about his great-grandfather, Siegfried: an eccentric scientist who invented radioactive toothpaste and a Jewish refugee from the Nazis who returned to Germany under cover of the Berlin Olympics to pull off a heist on his own home. 
 The only problem was that Siegfried had already written the book of his life – an unpublished, two-thousand page memoir so dry and rambling that none of his living descendants had managed to read it. And, as it turned out when Joe finally read the manuscript himself, it told a very different story from the one he thought he knew… 
 
 Thus begins a mystery which stretches across the twentieth century and around the world, from Berlin to Ankara, New York, Glasgow and eventually London – a mystery about the production of something much more sinister than toothpaste. On the trail of one ‘jolly grandpa’ with a patchy psychiatric history and an encyclopaedic knowledge of poison gases, Joe Dunthorne is forced to confront the uncomfortable questions that lie at the heart of every family. Can we ever understand where we come from? Is every family in the end a work of fiction? And even if the truth can be found – will we be able to live with it? 
Children of Radium is a remarkable, searching meditation on individual and collective inheritance. Witty and wry, deeply humane and endlessly surprising, it considers the long half-life of trauma, the weight of guilt and the ever-evasive nature of the truth.

The best book I’ve read in the past year . . . Dunthorne brings distinction and finesse to every sentence, such as when he speaks of the old man’s depression, “washing dishes as if trying to drown them”. A masterpiece . . . It will be huge

Finely and gently crafted, an extraordinary and unexpected journey

Wry, elliptical, hair-raising... A gripping story of family secrets and chemical warfare, it is also a tale of one writer’s search for a reliable past. Deep in these pages you discover a travelogue of lucid suspicions, brilliantly pursued, where historical truths are finally brought into the light. The first-rate poet and novelist is ever-present, bringing images and psychic dimensions to the book that are simply unforgettable. Joe Dunthorne has written a contemporary classic

Devastating and brilliant. A complex but hugely readable story that ranges across the lingering half-life of twentieth century European history, all told with Joe Dunthorne’s trademark dry wit. It’s a cracker

An investigative memoir like no other. Written with such clear-eyed intelligence, it's by turns wryly entertaining, morally complex and, ultimately, profoundly moving. A remarkable achievement from a writer who is consistently at the top of his game

Beautifully crafted and deeply moving, a work of searching intelligence, unstinting honesty and disarming wit. Somehow Joe Dunthorne manages to wrest compassion and human connection from some of the bleakest moments of modern history. This is a revelatory book

A deft, brilliant, deceptive book, somehow both devastating and hilarious. Dunthorne's family story is the best kind: both personal and universal, told with the darkest comedy and deep humanity. It is also a version of history at its most slippery, shaped by the flawed memories of the people we love and our own wayward attempts to make sense of them

Moving, funny, disturbing and deeply surprising, an action-packed meditation and a moral adventure story, full of the kinds of intimate and historical contradictions we all live with in one way or another. Like Primo Levi’s Gray Zone, the territory this book explores is defined by its ambiguity and complexity, and we are lucky to have a writer of Dunthorne’s enormous gifts to lead us on the trail

Brave, beautiful and incisive, an adventure that spans countries and resonates across generations. I have read many memoirs of the war and have never encountered anything like this. Lyrical but unflinching, this is an extraordinary book

Children of Radium is an exhilarating exploration of legacy. Unburying family secrets—especially secrets this big, this profound—is painstaking & heartbreaking work. In the hands of a lesser writer, a story like this would collapse, become just a mush of uncertainty. But Dunthorne is a masterful guide, surefooted and diligent and honest and funny. We are with him, enthralled, every step of the way

A staggering, genre-defining achievement . . . Children of Radium is delivered with radical honesty and self-deprecation that I found both intellectually and spiritually instructive. The opposite of propaganda has to be this persistent, courageous and meticulous search for the truth, against the odds, against the efforts of entire states, and against our instincts to present things in as mild and flattering a light as possible . . . Utterly moving, urgent and nuanced by the wisest of hearts

Joe Dunthorne was born and brought up in Swansea. He is the author of three novels and one collection of poetry, including Submarine, which has been translated into fifteen languages and made into an acclaimed film directed by Richard Ayoade, and Wild Abandon, which won the 2012 Encore Award. Children of Radium is his first work of non-fiction. He lives in London. 
 
www.joedunthorne.com

Joe Dunthorne’s great-grandfather was a family legend: the eccentric pre-war inventor of radioactive toothpaste and the Jewish refugee from the Nazis who returned to Germany under cover of the Berlin Olympics to pull off a heist on his own home. 
 
Joe always knew he would write a book about this one day. The only problem was that the old man had already written the book of his life – an unpublished memoir so dense and rambling that none of his living descendants had attempted to read it. And, as it turned out when Joe finally cracked open the manuscript, it told a very different story from the one he thought he knew…

Joe Dunthorne

Meet Oliver Tate, 15. Convinced that his father is depressed ("Depression comes in bouts. Like boxing. Dad is in the blue corner") and his mother is having an affair with her capoeira teacher, "a hippy-looking twonk", he embarks on a hilariously misguided campaign to bring the family back together. Meanwhile, he is also trying to lose his virginity - before he turns sixteeen - to his pyromaniac girlfriend Jordana. Will Oliver succeed in either aim? Submerge yourself in Submarine and find out . . .

Joe Dunthorne

Submarine

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