The fresh and exciting debut novel by the author of Konstantin"Immensely enjoyable . . . almost unbearably tense"-The GuardianIn an attic in Southwest London, an acid factory has just been dismantled. Six students, among them the luminously sexy Belle, are speeding in a decommissioned ambulance towards a tiny cottage in the Welsh borders. Two homicidal drug dealers and one middle-aged police inspector are giving chase.Meanwhile, Belle's jilted lover Angus stares out of his cottage window at shadows sliding across the grassy hillside, listens to squirrels fidgeting in the eaves and turns his thoughts to a squadron of young Japanese pilots, setting out from a Kyushu airstrip in 1945 intent on restarting the Second World War.And that's just the beginning...In this remarkable debut, Tom Bullough brilliantly combines the best rites-of-passage storytelling with the helter-skelter adroitness of a road movie.

Tom Bullough's Konstantin is a mesmerising novel about how the imagination can inspire the individual to greatness.1867, Ryazan, a Russian city in winter. Ten-year-old Konstantin, deafened by scarlet fever, dreams of flight - escaping to Moscow, fleeing to the silent stars. And his daring visions, pregnant with humanity's future, will take him further than anyone could believe.Moving from wolf-infested forests to the brothels of Moscow, from village life to the wondrous Age of Steam, from appalling tragedy to the discovery of a great love, Konstantin tells the beguiling story of a man who imagined the unimaginable: turning the dream of space travel into a reality.As vivid and evocative as Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall and David Mitchell's The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, Konstantin is a story of man, nature, and the limitless power of the imagination. Praise for...

By the author of Konstantin..."A superb book from the border, bright, full of truth, romantic and real... an honourable successor to Bruce Chatwin's On the Black Hill, springing from the same ground." Horatio Clare, author of Running for the HillsSet in the Welsh Borders in 1980, The Claude Glass charts an unlikely friendship between two neighbours; Robin, the seven-year-old son of English hippie sheep farmers, and Andrew, a child so neglected by his impoverished parents that he is left almost mute, seeking solace among the farm dogs.Exploring his parentís semi-derelict farmhouse, Andrew finds an antique convex mirror - a Claude Glass - and, gazing into it, the two boys see their wild, rural landscape strangely ordered. But this comforting vision proves fragile as tensions and sexual jealousy rock the adult world around them.Written with a lyricism and freshness that echoes the early work of Esther Freud or Bruce Chatwin, The Claude Glass draws you into the lives of its startling...

The stark beauty of the Welsh countryside is given powerful life in this sweeping tale of one family from World War II to the present day, for readers of Alice Munro, Kent Haruf, Bruce Chatwin, and Louise Erdrich.