Ned Beauman - Boxer, Beetle

It was time for a new pursuit, I decided. Boxing stuff, maybe. I quite fancied a pair of Seth Roach’s boxing gloves. So from Grublock’s collection I’d keep only the Goebbels Gottafchen Goethe, and from my own the letter from Hitler to Philip Erskine. The rest could go. I thought of donating it all to the rabbi from the cemetery, but I thought he might take the gesture the wrong way. Also, I wanted a nicer flat.

But selling it off would bog me down for months. Unless I could sell it all at once. To someone with a lot of money. To someone I was already in touch with. To someone I knew so well, in fact, that I could guess the exact percentage by which he would try to cheat me.

I’m embarrassed to admit how relieved I felt to have an excuse to open my chat program and unblock Stuart. Before I even had the chance to tell him what had happened, he typed:

STUART: did you see on the news? they’ve discovered a cure

for trimethylaminuria

they can fix it with gene therapy

KEVIN: what?

are you serious?

STUART: lol

no

why would that get on the news? no one would care

i had you fooled though, right?

KEVIN: yeah

ha ha

hey, i’ve got something cool to tell you

but first do you want to hear more about the guy being eaten by beetles?

“A rambunctious, deftly-plotted delight of a debut.”

— Observer

“A debut with the whiff of a cult classic … [Beauman’s] killer irony evokes early Evelyn Waugh … This is humour that goes beyond black, careening off into regions of darkness to deliver the funniest new book I’ve read in a year or two.”

— Independent

“Prodigiously clever and energetically entertaining.”

— Guardian

“Ned Beauman strides where lesser writers wouldn’t dare tiptoe. Boxer, Beetle maintains a high wire balance between giddy vulgarity, metafiction, and the sadness of being alive. It’s made me happy — and, yes, turning pages — like few first novels I can remember.”

— Melvin Jules Bukiet, author of After, Strange Fire , and other books

“Beauman writes with wit and verve.”

— Financial Times

“Dazzling … As in P.G. Wodehouse and the early Martin Amis the tone is mischievous and impudent without being merely jaunty or wacky … In Erskine and Broom we have two endlessly curious heroes.”

— Daily Express

“Ned Beauman’s astonishingly assured debut starts as it means to go on: confident, droll, and not in the best of taste … Beauman’s ability to keep the disparate elements of his story both elaborating and meshing is impressive … Above all, Beauman writes with real flair and invention.”

— Sunday Times

“Clever, inventive, intelligently structured, genre-spanning … and above all, an enjoyable, high-octane read through a fascinating period in history.”

— Independent on Sunday

“Exuberant … There are politics, black comedy, experimentation and wild originality — and I haven’t even got to the beetles. Terrific.”

— Times

“There’s a glut of gold in Boxer, Beetle , Ned Beauman’s heart-stoppingly creative debut. He snares you with a new hook every page — conspiracy theorists, secret cults, sodomites, Nazis! It’s as addictive as Wikipedia and much, much funnier.”

— Simon Rich, author of Ant Farm and Elliot Allagash

“This would be a brilliant debut from anyone, regardless of their age. As it is, I can only gape in admiration at a new writing force and wonder what he’s going to produce next.”

— Daily Mail

“ Boxer, Beetle is driven by a rapacious and addictive hilarity … Beauman’s writing is as elegant and sharp as the narrative is wild.”

— Age