Pleasured - Tapa blanda

Philip Hensher is one of our most acclaimed younger novelists and critics. His first two novels OTHER LULUS and KITCHEN VENOM were highly praised, and his reviews in the Spectator, the Mail and elsewhere have made him a highly visible and controversial literary pundit. This, his new novel, is his most ambitious so far. Set in Berlin in the last 80s, before the Wall came down, it tells the story of Heinrich Himmler, a restless young man working part-time as a waiter, who takes on a mysterious errand for the shaady Mr Picker. Picker, a spy for an unspecified government believes that East Berliners will be revolutionised not by political activism, but by pleasure. He pays Heinrich Himmler to deliver $50, 000 of free Ecstasy to East Berlin and hopes to watch the effect of the tabs as east Germany discovers a new world of bliss. But the plan goes seriously awry. Very funny, very unsettling, this is a novel that recalls Graham Greene and Evelyn Waugh, but has a sophistication and an edge all of its own.

Set in Berlin in the late 80s, this novel tells the story of Heinrich Himmler, a restless young man working part-time as a waiter, who takes on a mysterious errand for the shady Mr Picker. But Picker is a spy for an unspecified government, yet his plan goes humorously awry.