TOMAS
James Palumbo

Reader, beware this book. It’s short and small. It fits into your pocket and you can read it at leisure in any public place or alone at night. It looks like so many other books. You may think that, if the author’s any good, the story will help you escape the world around you: you can drift into another place, better or worse, according to your mood. This is precisely the danger. Do not trust appearances: below these black printed words, spread page over page, lies a vision of the world that’ll alarm the majority, revolt the sensitive and obliterate the prudish.
 
Impossible to précis its narrative, Palumbo’s story weaves and curves its way around the adventures of Tomas, a young man ensconced in a world of wealth, privilege and corruption. Like Candide and Gulliver before him, Tomas’s adventures will startle the reader’s imagination, yet linger in her mind. What seems grotesque, even impossible, has already happened ... For excess of imagination, passion, outrage, death and love, greed and vice, often provide a clearer view of life.
 
The Ministry of Sound, James Palumbo’s iconic South London night club, established a bench mark which captivated a generation. The creation of a worldwide multi-media business renowned for its innovative and daring visions has ensured his continuing influence within the popular culture of our times.
TOMAS is Palumbo’s first novel.

"TOMAS is the best work of fiction that I have read that crystallises the hypocrisy behind the current financial turmoil. It is a book that is reminiscent of the best satire that Britain has published. It is funny, profound and seductive in equal measure. It's such a real and unsettling book, and at the same time very prescient. He writes in a very visceral style that is uncompromising in its narrative. It really is a mindbending book that will astonish and intrigue." – Naim Attallah, Chairman of Quartet Books

"I'm very intrigued by TOMAS, and impressed by its rich imagination and other literary qualities ... I imagine the book, with its wide and free-ranging inventiveness, offers an experience comparable with a good 'trip'." – Barbara Bray