Randall - Tapa blanda

Randall has been longlisted for the 2015 Desmond Elliott prize.

'Gibbs has produced the sort of novel you pray for as a reviewer... Galley Beggar Press [have] had recent success with A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing. Randall, I'd contend, is a better novel.' Tibor Fischer in The Guardian

'Both absurd and eerily believable... Gibbs's novel is more than mischief: as with all the best lampoons, it dissects things that really matter and have gone awry... The characterisation is disarmingly sympathetic and the prose fluid and inventive, right up to the final, playful revelation.' The Telegraph

'Long awaited and well worth the wait.' Geoff Dyer

'Luminous, biting a rare delight. This is a novel that is at once funny and heartbreaking, intelligent and fiercely gripping.' Alex Preston, author of This Bleeding City, Spears Best First Novel winner, 2010

'A cool book with a big heart.' Anjali Joseph, author of Saraswati Park, Betty Trask and Desmond Elliot Prize winner, 2011

'Smart, funny, and delightfully inventive. Randall is another exciting debut from Galley Beggar Press.' --James Miller, author of Lost Boys and The Sunshine State

'It has style and aplomb, and is brimful of brilliance' --The Asylum

'It has style and aplomb, and is brimful of brilliance' --The Asylum

'Another closely observed tale of youthful zeal propels Jonathan Gibbs's Randall, which contained two of 2014's more appealing fictional premises: Damien Hirst's imaginary death in 1989, and a stash of paintings depicting the art world's major players in pornographic splendour. This portrait of a Young British Artist as a Deceased Man is vibrantly assured.' - --The Independent's best debuts of 2014

Beginning in the early 1990s, Randall is a satirical alternative history of the heady years of Cool Britannia and the emergence of the Young British Artists. It asks what would have happened if Damien Hirst had never arrived? If someone else had become the most notorious and influential young British artist? And what if that someone had been more talented, more provocative, more outrageous? And far, far funnier? --