The Mark and the Void
From the author of The Bee Sting
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
Winner of the Everyman Wodehouse Prize 2016
A comic masterpiece about love, art, greed and the banking crisis, by the Booker Prize-shortlisted author of The Bee Sting
‘Hugely entertainingly [and] read-the-whole-page-again funny . . . The best novel I have reviewed this side of the Atlantic’ Observer
Meet Claude: an investment-bank drone longing for something more meaningful. Marooned in soggy Dublin, he yearns for art, philosophy, and a steady girlfriend. You could call him a modern-day everyman – or just another lonely banker.
Now meet Paul: struggling novelist, strip-club enthusiast, pioneer of not-entirely-legal internet start-ups. Paul is willing to stoop to any level in pursuit of the riches he knows he deserves. You could call him a troubled genius – or a shameless crook.
Here are two men with something missing from their lives. they might just be able to help each other out of a big hole. Or their friendship might be the most disastrous thing to hit Dublin since the banking crash. As Paul’s get-rich-quick schemes blow up in his face, and the global economy goes missing in action, will Claude be able to save the day, get the girl, and finally become the hero of his own story?
‘Brilliant, intricately entertaining . . . This novel’s arrival deserves a trumpeting fanfare’ Sunday Independent
‘A comic classic from one of the most gifted novelists of his generation. Funny, angry and unputdownable’ Daily Express
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Can a book that deals heavily with the ongoing financial strife of the past decade be funny? The answer is yes, thanks to the cartwheeling imagination of Irish novelist Paul Murray (Skippy Dies). In The Mark and the Void, French banker Claude—who works in the Dublin office of the Bank of Torabundo—is approached by a shady writer named Paul, who wants to write a book about a finance industry Everyman. Murray clearly has strong opinions about multinational banks’ calamitous impact on his hometown, but he channels them into a twisty, madcap story that’s chock full of colourful characters, philosophical wit and touching human drama.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Murray's follow-up to Skippy Dies is a protracted jab at the world of banking, a charming send-up of the financial crisis that is hilariously absent of hope. Claude Martingale is a French migr living in Dublin and working for the Investment Bank of Torabundo. His life is not entertaining. So why does Paul, a novelist (who happens to share the actual author's first name), want to make Claude the everyman protagonist of his next novel? With the approval of bank management, Paul begins to shadow Claude through his typical office work days. But it quickly becomes clear there's more to Paul's interest than he's saying. Add to this intrigue the potential collapse of Ireland's economy, tent cities inhabited by protestors dressed as zombies, and a mad Russian mathematician around whose equations BOT may be structuring its new Structured Products Department, and Murray's latest quickly takes off. Here, again, the author displays much of the quick wit of his popular previous novel, but this effort also boasts a more modernist slant, with ever-blurring lines between art imitating life and life imitating art for the characters. The result is another page-turner with smarts, an absurdist riff on our economic follies, one that leaves the impression that it's all not so far-fetched, after all.
