Snatches - Tapa blanda

Rowson's pullulating prose is the perfect complement to the pitiless exuberance of his graphic style. This text is a conundrum wrapped hidden inside a maze made from feathers. Tickle yourself silly (Will Self)

Just as every cramped inch of a Rowson drawing squirms with life, so does every sentence of each episode of this book...the jostling, compendious, episodic style is perfect to propel the reader through the demented slideshow of man's real and imagined inhumanity to man...even the darkest sequences are illuminated by the fireworks of Rowson's ingenuity... Snatches is a brilliant piece of work, crammed with enough wit and imagination to fill a dozen separate works (Daily Telegraph)

Flamboyant (Hephzibah Anderson Observer)

Keep it in the lavatory and your legs will probably go to sleep; keep it by the bed and you probably won't be able to sleep at all. Be careful not to quote it to your nearest and dearest; you'll either drive them off or make them steal it from you. I doubt very much that a funnier book will appear this decade (Michael Moorcock Guardian)

The book is richly detailed and plays with a wide range of styles...there is enough here in the spidery experimentation of the caricaturist's pen to draw the reader into a nightmarish, yet oddly satisfying interpretation of history (Spectator)

From the appearance of the human race in Africa, four million years ago, to our ultimate destiny beyond the stars, Martin Rowson's first novel takes us to Mexico under the Aztecs, the Inquisition in Rome, the secrets of the Internet, the bogs of Irish nationalism, introduces an alcoholic werewolf and his dog, educates us in literary and management theory, glimpses 9/11, journalism, warfare, time travel, the Arts and Crafts Movement, Global Warming, personal therapy and focuses on Hell.

Retelling the stories of the worst decisions the human race has ever made - and featuring a cast that includes St Simeon Stylites, Hernando Cortés, Adolf Hitler, Evelyn Waugh, Sigmund Freud, Josef Stalin and Candide in Las Vegas, and with supporting roles from Henry Kissinger, Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, Pol Pot and Osama Bin Laden (as well as Superman and a talking sturgeon), Snatches is a brilliantly picaresque, funny and ultimately worrying exploration of love, art, politics, history and just how bloody awful it is to be here.

(2005-02-17)