The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore

A star is born: with this brilliant and blazing novel, Benjamin Hale has produced the most unforgettable and original debut since Everything is Illuminated. 'The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore is an enormous, glorious rattlebag of a book. Benjamin Hale's extremely loud debut has echoes of the acerbic musings of Humbert Humbert and the high-pitched shrieking of Oskar Matzerath. Hale's narrator, Bruno Littlemore, is a yelping, bouncing, pleading, longing, lost, loony, bleeding, pleading, laughing, beseeching wonder. The book is of such enormous originality and vitality; it is the book I feel I have been searching years for but have never yet found, until now.' Edward Carey

A star is born: with this brilliant and blazing novel, Benjamin Hale has produced the most unforgettable and original debut since Everything is Illuminated.

'A brave and visionary work of genius . . . touching and quirky... brash, glittering, engaging... The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore is a major accomplishment' - San Francisco Chronicle

Bruno Littlemore; linguist, artist, philosopher. A life defined by a soaring mind, yet bound by a restrictive body. Born in down-town Chicago, Bruno's precocity pulls him from an unremarkable childhood, and under the tuition of Lydia, his intellect dazzles a watching world. But when falls in love with his mentor, the world turns on them with outrage: Bruno is striving to be something he is not, and denying everything that he is. For despite his all too human complexities, dreams and frailties, Bruno's hairy body, flattened nose and jutting brow are, undeniably, the features of a chimpanzee.

Like its protagonist, this novel is big, abrasive, witty, perverse, earnest and accomplished. The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore goes beyond satire by showing us not what it means, but what it feels like be human - to love and lose, learn, aspire, grasp, and, in the end, to fail.