MAN-EATING TYPEWRITER
PUBLISHED BY WHITE RABBIT
2023
BLURB
‘I am an ugly man, a meese meshigena-omi, but a fashionable omi. And soon to be a molto famous omi. Lell my lapper.’
Set at the fag-end of the 1960s and framed as a novel within a novel published by a seedy purveyor of pulp fiction, Man-Eating Typewriter is a homage to the avant-garde counterculture of the 20th century. Told in Polari, it is the story of an anarchist named Raymond Novak and his plan to commit a ‘fantabulosa crime’ in 276 days that will revolt the world. A surrealistic odyssey that stretches from occupied Paris to the cruise-liner SS Unmentionable to lawless Tangier before settling in Swinging London, the book casts Novak as an agitator and freedom fighter - but, as his memoirs become more and more threatening, his publishers find themselves far more involved in his violent personality cult than they ever intended.
Constructed like a hallucinogenic cocktail of A Clockwork Orange, Pale Fire and Jean Genet’s jailbird fantasies, Man-Eating Typewriter is an act of seductive sedition by a writer wth unfathomable literary talent and boldness. Wild, transgressive, erotic and resolutely uncompromising, this marks the return of a writer who is out there on an island of his own making; a book that will be talked about, celebrated and puzzled over for decades.
PRAISE
Shortlisted for the GOLDSMITHS PRIZE 2023
Longlisted for the NOTA BENE PRIZE 2024
Included in the Times Literary Supplement’s Books of the Year 2023
‘Ingenious’ - The Guardian Books Highlights for 2023
‘Outrageous, audacious and shameless, Man-Eating Typewriter is a brilliantly constructed murderous lark. Like A Clockwork Orange adapted by John Waters at his most gleeful’ - John Higgs, author of William Blake vs the World and Love and Let Die
‘I love this book, this jaw-dropping, obsessive love-letter to the alchemy of the word… An original and uncompromising work of true literary genius’ - David Keenan, author of This is Memorial Device and For the Good Times‘
‘Remarkable, beautiful, magic. Like Ulysses for those who can’t cope with reading Ulysses’ - Paolo Hewitt, author of Getting High and The Looked After Kid
‘Single-handedly proving the novel isn’t dead, Milward breathes new life into the form in this erudite, witty yet immaculately crafted, romp of a book’ - Ali Millar, author of The Last Days
‘It doesn’t get more exciting. In literary terms, he’s right up there with the best this country has to offer’ - Rupert Thomson, author of The Insult and Never Anyone But You
‘Man-Eating Typewriter is truly extraordinary: as if Mervyn Peake and Kenneth Williams wrote a book with William Burroughs’ - Michael Bracewell, author of England is Mine and Unfinished Business
‘This magnificent, unhinged book is best described by one of its own characters - it’s a beautiful fucking heinous masterpiece’ - Joe Dunthorne, author of Submarine, Wild Abandon and The Adulterants
‘Milward has created a very rare beast of a book; one that is propulsive, relevant, outrageous, and often alarmingly beautiful. Here is a novel that lays bare the depravity of human impulse, whilst testing the limits of language and form with masterful ease and reckless glee… Has all the transgressive energy of a cult classic in the making’ - Maddie Mortimer, author of Maps Of Our Spectacular Bodies, judge of Goldsmiths Prize 2023
‘A daring, meandering, brilliant book… An exhibition of literary verve as well as a probing examination of morality within a sick society, Man-Eating Typewriter is a phenomenal achievement’ - Nicholas Harris, Literary Review
‘Man-Eating Typewriter is a disgusting and depraved book, awash with orgies, drug abuse, bestiality, casual violence, cross-dressing, castration, comically unconventional sexual assaults, and lovingly described abnormal bowel movements. I thoroughly enjoyed it… [It] deserves to be boosted by a prize or two’ - Jake Kerridge, The Telegraph
‘Richard Milward… writes like a demon, and has produced that rarest of all things on the modern bookshelf: a genuinely exhilarating entertainment. The linguistic invention borders on the dazzling… both laugh-out-loud funny and authentically disgusting’ - Neil Bartlett, The Guardian (read the full review HERE)
‘Much like A Clockwork Orange… you soon develop an aptitude for Polari, either out of familiarity or contextual clues. Milward’s mastery of voice means your patience is amply rewarded… [He] writes with such joyous brio that he can get away with anything’ - Rory Kiberd, The Irish Times
‘Ingenious… Intricate, hilarious, as grossly excessive as the milieu it depicts, the novel often reads as if Jean Genet and Vladimir Nabokov had joined the screenwriting team of the Carry On films… An epic virtuoso turn’ - Boyd Tonkin, Financial Times
‘Clever dark comedy… Milward’s commitment to developing [Polari] into a full lingo is unsurpassed’ - Paul Baker, The Spectator
‘Incredibly written… Brilliantly crafted and interwoven with exquisite plays of language… As absurdist as Dada, and as funny as Round the Horne’ - .Cent
‘The sheer lunacy that drives the characters into situations maintains interest with eloquence and ease… Man-Eating Typewriter comes across… as a strange amalgam of fiction and non-fiction, and the focus required to process its level of detail will reward the reader’ - Buzz
‘It is seriously fucking good. It is like Pale Fire crossed with American Psycho written by David Bowie… This will win multiple awards and it will be on every serious best of list for 2023. Just buy it’ - Beyond the Zero Podcast
‘Milward’s style has a pizzazz and swagger that makes most mainstream works look positively staid… An exercise in left-field extravagance’ - Private Eye
‘An excellent puzzle… Milward has written a 536-page cornucopia of unconditional love for the possibilities of language and the novel… It is undoubtedly the most original reading experience of the spring’ (‘ett förträffligt pussel… Milward har skrivit ett 536-sidigt ymnighetshorn av villkorslös kärlek till språkets och romanens möjligheter… Det är vårens tveklöst mest originella läsupplevelse’) - Andres Lokko, Svenska Dagbladet
‘It is, without argument, a tour de force’ - Jonathon Green, author of Green’s Dictionary of Slang
‘Daring, original, linguistically playful, epic. Should have won all the awards’ - Will Burns, author of The Paper Lantern
‘A modern day masterpiece’ - Memorial Device fiction book of the year 2023
‘Wildly ambitious and truly original’ - Strong Words’ #3 Book of the Year 2023
‘Self-consciously “experimental” novels have a habit of not delivering on their promises, but I was riotously entertained by Richard Milward’s Man-Eating Typewriter, which, while roaming picaresquely for upwards of 500 pages, somehow manages not to run out of steam’ - D.J. Taylor, Times Literary Supplement Books of the Year 2023
‘[A] thrilling, mind-bending, pyrotechnic, “fantabulosa” feat’ - Jonny Aldridge, 3:AM Magazine
‘Uproarious… Such outlandish fun’ - Daily Telegraph
EXTRACT
Never-Neverland, Londres W1
10th October 1969
Dear Sir/Madam,
I am an ugly man, a meese meshigena-omi, but a fashionable omi. And soon to be a molto famous omi. Lell my lapper.
Esteemed publisher of glistening livers, myself and my devotees cordially invite you to join with us in this forthcoming fame. We hereby offer you an una-in-a-lavvytime lucrative share in the high-flying, hallucinating, espressoschlumphing, pâté-nibbling, jibbering, both-way-swinging, reprogramming, reverse-servo-lathering, Polarising, paranoid, cobblestoned, mono-bothering, line-crossing, cross-dressing, omi-jarrying, lav-hammering Raymond Novak Experience!
In duey-chenta setta-daitcha-heksa junos (276 days, for those without the lingo), myself and my devotees will commit a fantastic crime, a fantabulosa crime that will revolt the mond. My nom will be on the oyster-levers of every daffy jittery civvy as news breaks of this dazzling atrocity. My eek splattered across the cover of every inky and glossy on the newsstand. The Establishment brought to its lally-caps. The system left thoroughly smashed and charvered!
In anticipation of my untimely (and yet molto likely) demise on this date (batons, bombas, pistolets and molto sang guaranteed – or else all costs reparkered to you in full!), I am screeving my memoirs. What I propose is: if you are interested, I will send you morso-by-morso each chapter as it is tap-tap-DING!ed out upon the lav-hammer.
I am your man. But I am a meese omi, and a coddy auteur to boot. My achievements in education have not been up to dick to say the least, but do not fear: I have enlisted the help of a devoted comrade – an award-winning scholar and author – to fantomscreeve (ghostwrite, if you will) my autobiography.
I want nanti dinarli for my liver, nanti advance, nix royalties, no money for this venture. Only immortality, the lavvy-everlasting. The chance to screech my story to the masses in the event of my (ultra inevitable?) death come next summertide. And you, in turn, have this una-in-a-lavvytime opportunity to publish my truthful screeve immediately as news breaks of this mostest fantabulosa crime. It will be a real humdinger, a bona dinarli-spinner, I assure you. REVOLTING!
Esteemed publisher, if you are interested, give me a sign. Post a petite handlebar moustache in the ‘Small Ads’ section of the INTERNATIONAL TIMES, and in return I shall send you, chapter-upon-chapter as they are bashed out, these most specjalni sensational memoirs.
Bona lavs,
Raymond Marianne Novak (alias Lord Never-Never, alias The Guru, alias The Emperor, alias Raymond the Bastard, alias Raymond the Ponce, alias Signore Shapeshifter, alias Les Divertissements, alias The Walking Contraceptive, alias Ray le Roy, alias Ray la Purée, alias Neptunus Rex, alias Mr Sanson, alias Keith Caesar, alias Raymond le Poissonnier, alias Raymond the Poisoner, alias The Prole Dandy, alias The Scum King, alias The Carnish Mincer, alias Le Dieu-des-Indésirables, alias Le Dieu-du-Jour ...)
buy
Buy Man-Eating Typewriter direct from White Rabbit HERE
LISTEN
Buy the Man-Eating Typewriter audiobook HERE (narrated by Richard Milward and Marc Graham)
Listen to the Man-Eating Typewriter playlist on Spotify HERE