Jackdaw, Tade Thompson

A wild and febrile romp through the author's brilliant imagination, this is a fever dream of a book which depicts an unsettling, absurd and sometimes comedic transgression of social norms and an ascent to the glorious echelons of madness.- Lucie McKnight Hardie, author of Dead Relatives

In this shocking, and at times darkly comic, novel, a psychiatrist hired to write a short piece on Francis Bacon becomes obsessed with the artist, his life, and the characters who surrounded him.

As he becomes consumed with the need to understand Bacon, and to create his own art, his grip on reality becomes increasingly tenuous, and he is haunted by disturbing figures. This short, bold piece of fiction, explores how the passion needed to create art can also destroy the artist.

Thompson's prose, contaminated by Bacon's unflinching view of the human animal, makes for vital, unsettling reading - Will Maclean, author of The Apparition Phase