The Insult - Softcover

Thomson, Rupert

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0679781501 ISBN 13: 9780679781509

Publisher: Vintage, 1997

Synopsis

"We are in the dark side of the brain--full of grief and deliciously strange comedy. I've never read anything like it."
--Michael Ondaatje
With this eerie, provocative, and utterly original novel, Rupert Thomson takes the psychological thriller into unexplored territory. Martin Blom is walking toward his car in a supermarket parking lot when a single random bullet pierces his brain. From that moment he is blind--his doctor says permanently. But then one evening Martin discovers what is either a genuine miracle or a delusion suffered occasionally by the newly blind: in the dark, he can see.

Armed with this ambiguous gift, Thomson's protagonist enters a nocturnal world of strip clubs and sleazy hotels. In that world, an alluring young woman may give herself to the one man she thinks is unable to see her, only to vanish inexplicably. In that world, a blind man may become a murder suspect. And in the gorgeously disorienting world of The Insult, reality itself is a consensual hallucination. And you succumb to it at your own risk.  
"Reads like an unholy collaboration between Oliver Sacks and Edgar Allan Poe."  --Time Out

"Thomson is a master stylist, a virtuoso of the hallucinatory image, a writer with a dark vision and a bright future."  --Washington Post

About this title

Review:

If you haven't discovered the black-magic world of British novelist Rupert Thomson, this quality paperback edition of his psychological thriller, The Insult, is a fine point of entry. There are elements of both Franz Kafka and Raymond Chandler in the story, as Martin Blom--blinded by a shot to the head in a supermarket parking lot--finds out one night that he can actually see. Is it a result of what his doctors insist is a delusion often suffered by the newly blinded? Or does it have something to do with a bizarre experiment hidden in a secret file in a part of the hospital he accidentally stumbles upon? Martin is soon living on his own in a seedy hotel, using his unique night vision to explore adventures--social, criminal, and sexual--totally new to him. If The Insult gets you hooked on Thomson, Air & Fire is also available.

About the Author:

Rupert Thomson was born in Eastbourne, East Sussex, England, and studied Medieval History and Political Thought at the University of Cambridge. His highly acclaimed works include novels Secrecy, The Five Gates of Hell, Death of a Murderer, The Book of Revelation, Soft!, and The Insult, and a memoir, This Party's Got to Stop. In 2015, Thomson was named a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He lives in London.

About this edition

• Publisher: Vintage
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0679781501
• ISBN 13: 9780679781509
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 416