About this product

Product Identifiers

PublisherUnbound

ISBN-101800183240

ISBN-139781800183247

eBay Product ID (ePID)21070937047

Product Key Features

Book TitleEmpty Wigs

Number of Pages1008 Pages

LanguageEnglish

TopicLiterary, Political

Publication Year2025

GenreFiction

AuthorJonathan Meades

FormatHardcover

Dimensions

Item Height2.2 in

Item Weight44.1 Oz

Item Length9.6 in

Item Width6.2 in

Additional Product Features

Dewey Edition23

Reviews"A head-spinning turn that can quicken from high farce into deep seriousness, vaulting across time and space . . . no one is safe from its satirical edge." -- Chris Harvey, Daily Telegraph "Three hundred and whatever glorious and on occasion incomprehensible words . . . In every sense, a mag. op." -- Jonathon Green, editor of Green's Dictionary of Slang "I was remind of a huge museum of taxidermy with all the characters duly fucked and stuffed accordingly. Bravo." -- Chris Petit, author of The Psalm Killer "Go to Empty Wigs for prose that never ceases to dazzle, for an extended holiday from contemporary pieties and to disgrace yourself with laughter." -- Paul Genders, Literary Review PRAISE FOR JONATHAN MEADES: "Utterly unmissable, wonderfully incisive and funny as hell." -- John Burnside, author of Black Cat Bone "A prose Hogarth." -- Roger Lewis, biographer, journalist and author of Erotic Vagrancy "Meades is brainy, scabrous, mischievous and a bugger to pigeonhole: a fizzing anomaly." -- Tim Teeman, The Times "One of the foremost prose stylists of his age in any register . . . Probably we don't deserve Meades, a man who apparently has never composed a dull paragraph." -- Steven Poole, Guardian "The scope of his ideas, the force of his arguments, the sheer vitality of his sentences: these things come at you like negative ions after a storm." -- Rachel Cooke, New Statesman "Meades has been compared, favourably, to Rabelais and, flatteringly, to Swift. The truth is that he outstrips both in the gaudiness of his imagination." -- Henry Hitchings, Times Literary Supplement "Provocative, opinionated, allusive, variously heretical and revisionist." -- Martin Hoyle, Financial Times "Meades is a very great prose stylist, with a dandy's delight in the sound and feel of words, and we are lucky to have him." -- Ian Thomson, Spectator, "A head-spinning turn that can quicken from high farce into deep seriousness, vaulting across time and space . . . no one is safe from its satirical edge." -- Chris Harvey, Daily Telegraph "Three hundred and whatever glorious and on occasion incomprehensible words . . . In every sense, a mag. op." -- Jonathon Green, editor of Green's Dictionary of Slang "I was remind of a huge museum of taxidermy with all the characters duly fucked and stuffed accordingly. Bravo." -- Chris Petit, author of The Psalm Killer "Go to Empty Wigs for prose that never ceases to dazzle, for an extended holiday from contemporary pieties and to disgrace yourself with laughter." --' Paul Genders, Literary Review PRAISE FOR JONATHAN MEADES: "Utterly unmissable, wonderfully incisive and funny as hell." -- John Burnside, author of Black Cat Bone "A prose Hogarth." -- Roger Lewis, biographer, journalist and author of Erotic Vagrancy "Meades is brainy, scabrous, mischievous and a bugger to pigeonhole: a fizzing anomaly." -- Tim Teeman, The Times "One of the foremost prose stylists of his age in any register . . . Probably we don't deserve Meades, a man who apparently has never composed a dull paragraph." -- Steven Poole, Guardian "The scope of his ideas, the force of his arguments, the sheer vitality of his sentences: these things come at you like negative ions after a storm." -- Rachel Cooke, New Statesman "Meades has been compared, favourably, to Rabelais and, flatteringly, to Swift. The truth is that he outstrips both in the gaudiness of his imagination." -- Henry Hitchings, Times Literary Supplement "Provocative, opinionated, allusive, variously heretical and revisionist." -- Martin Hoyle, Financial Times "Meades is a very great prose stylist, with a dandy's delight in the sound and feel of words, and we are lucky to have him." -- Ian Thomson, Spectator, "Three hundred and whatever glorious and on occasion incomprehensible words . . . In every sense, a mag. op." -- Jonathon Green, editor of Green's Dictionary of Slang "I was remind of a huge museum of taxidermy with all the characters duly fucked and stuffed accordingly. Bravo." -- Chris Petit, author of The Psalm Killer, "Three hundred and whatever glorious and on occasion incomprehensible words . . . In every sense, a mag. op." -- Jonathon Green , editor of Green's Dictionary of Slang "I was remind of a huge museum of taxidermy with all the characters duly fucked and stuffed accordingly. Bravo." -- Chris Petit , author of The Psalm Killer

Dewey Decimal823.92

Synopsis'Go to Empty Wigs for prose that never ceases to dazzle, for an extended holiday from contemporary pieties and to disgrace yourself with laughter' Paul Genders, Literary Review Empty Wigs is a hallucinatory ride through the twentieth century that will cement Jonathan Meades as one of the great imaginative writers of our age. It moves from bloody Algiers in 1962 to the Welsh Marches in the late nineteenth century, from Lüneburg Heath to suburban southern England. Its characters are damned and doomed. They exert free will so make terrible choices. Their appetites are base. Their lives are without end. They lurch to extremes. From euthanasia to terrorism and political assassination, with secrets and betrayals, great gothic houses and pseudo-scientific experiments, Empty Wigs is a vast compendium of tales from the jungle of existence which show humankind at its most abject. Many of its stories are bleak, perverse, harrowing. Many are tragically farcical. But the writing is neon-rich, gorgeous and baroque, funny and joyfully offensive. Told through frames within frames, mazes within mazes, colliding narratives and quick changing moods, Empty Wigs is a late modern masterpiece and a return to the novel's origins. 'Meades finds the mot juste, the striking reference, to complete every brilliant line. Is it all a bit too much? Reader, it is' Stephen Smith, Observer 'A head-spinning turn that can quicken from high farce into deep seriousness, vaulting across time and space' Chris Harvey, Daily Telegraph, 'Go to Empty Wigs for prose that never ceases to dazzle, for an extended holiday from contemporary pieties and to disgrace yourself with laughter' Paul Genders, Literary Review Empty Wigs is a hallucinatory ride through the twentieth century that will cement Jonathan Meades as one of the great imaginative writers of our age. It moves from bloody Algiers in 1962 to the Welsh Marches in the late nineteenth century, from Lüneburg Heath to suburban southern England. Its characters are damned and doomed. They exert free will so make terrible choices. Their appetites are base. Their lives are without end. They lurch to extremes. From euthanasia to terrorism and political assassination, with secrets and betrayals, great gothic houses and pseudo-scientific experiments, Empty Wigs is a vast compendium of tales from the jungle of existence which show humankind at its most abject. Many of its stories are bleak, perverse, harrowing. Many are tragically farcical. But the writing is neon-rich, gorgeous and baroque, funny and joyfully offensive. Told through frames within frames, mazes within mazes, colliding narratives and quick changing moods, Empty Wigs is a late modern masterpiece and a return to the novel's origins. 'Meades finds the mot juste , the striking reference, to complete every brilliant line. Is it all a bit too much? Reader, it is' Stephen Smith, Observer 'A head-spinning turn that can quicken from high farce into deep seriousness, vaulting across time and space' Chris Harvey, Daily Telegraph