Good to Be God - Softcover

Fischer, Tibor

Softcover

ISBN 10: 184688084X ISBN 13: 9781846880841

Publisher: Alma Books, 2017

Synopsis

Using a friend's credit card and identity, Tyndale Corbett arrives in Miami to discover the joys of luxury hotels and above all the delight of being someone else, someone successful. Feeling his previous failure might be due to insufficient ambition, Tyndale decides on a new money-making scheme. He will up the ante exponentially, and pretend to be someone really important and successful: God. His mission to convince the citizenry of Miami that he is, despite appearances, the Supreme Being results in him taking over the Church of the Heavily Armed Christ. His duties there involve him in forming a private army, hiring call girls, trafficking coke, issuing death threats, beating off church-jackers and sorting out (as almightily as possible) various problems his parishioners are having with pets. All the while he is working on his grand project, the clincher miracle: dying and coming back to life...

About this title

About the Author:

Tibor Fischer was born in Stockport of Hungarian parents. Brought up in South London, he was educated at Cambridge and worked as a journalist. He was shortlisted for the Booker Prize for his first novel, Under the Frog, which also won a Betty Trask Award, and he was nominated as one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists. Subsequent works include The Thought Gang, The Collector Collector, Don't Read this Book if You're Stupid and Voyage to the End of the Room.

Review:

“Fischer is one of the funniest writers in the business.” - The Daily Telegraph

“This is Fischer at his sharpest – a widely original feelbad philosophical hayride.” - The Times

“Brutal, dazzling and clever” - The Independent

“Fischer’s fecund imagination keeps the satire constantly engaging” - The Daily Mail

“The narrative is . . . propelled by the author’s madcap imagination and inventive language.” - The Times Literary Supplement

“A spot on mixture of shady characters and searing insight . . . as blackly funny as it is profound.” - Maxim

“As in all his fiction, Fischer makes comic capital out of the fretful, trivial, even sordid realities that get in the way of five-star ideals.” - Financial Times

“There are a lot of funny lines . . . Good to be God dramatises the neuroses of a man mired in middle age who is dismally disappointed with the way things have panned out.” - Sunday Telegraph

“A born story teller” - Sunday Times

“Fischer's writing is as inventive as ever and he also manages to use Tyndale's exploits to explore what it means to live - or try to live - a good life.” - The Observer

“A picaresque romp ensues, set in a vividly evoked Miami, full of oddball characters and witty one-liners.” - The Sunday Telegraph

“I have seen this book being handed round a pub with hearty recommendations, and verdicts such as ‘a return to form’. When was the last time you saw hardened drinkers pass around a novel that asks some big philosophical questions?” - Paperback of the Week, Guardian Review

“Deciding that identity fraud lacks ambition, Tyndale Corbett attempts to convince the people of Miami that he is God. His inadvertent success has unholy and darkly comic consequences.” - The Times

“A tight, twangy style, full of sarcasm and cool American expressions” - The Independent

“The best thinking person’s entertainer since Iris Murdoch . . . one of his funniest books to date. - Time Out

“A born storyteller.” - Sunday Times

About this edition

• Publisher: Alma Books
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 184688084X
• ISBN 13: 9781846880841
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 270