'Sparkles with classical allusions and a wisecracking humour ... it is pure joy' Daily Telegraph

It all begins the night a leaflet comes through the door of unsuccessful novelist Herman Orff, promising a magical cure for writer's block. The strange treatment plunges him into a hallucinatory London dreamworld populated by figures mythical and real: a severed talking head, Vermeer's girl with a pearl earring, his lost love Luise and, beneath it all, the Kraken awaiting. As Herman will discover, creating art is a tough business.

'One of his most accessibly entertaining books' The Times

'Short, smart and fizzy, the novel seeks out the roots of creativity with none of the solemnity that phrase implies' New Statesman

Russell Hoban