Dead Writers in Rehab

Paul Bassett Davies

The only thing worse than waking up with the hangover from hell is waking up with a hangover in hell

When literary reprobate Foster James wakes up in a strange country house, he assumes he’s been consigned to rehab (yet again) by his dwindling band of friends and growing collection of ex-wives.

But he soon realises there’s something a bit different about this place after he gets punched in the face by Ernest Hemingway.

Is Foster dead? Has his less-than-saintly existence finally caught up with him? After an acrimonious group therapy session with Hunter S. Thompson, Colette, William Burroughs, and Coleridge, it seems pretty likely. But he still feels alive, especially after an up-close and personal one-on-one session with Dorothy Parker.

When he discovers that the two enigmatic doctors who run the institution are being torn apart by a thwarted love affair, he and the other writers must work together to save something that, for once, is bigger than their own gigantic egos.

This is a love story. It’s for anyone who loves writing and writers. It’s also a story about the strange and terrible love affair between creativity and addiction, told by a charming, selfish bastard who finally confronts his demons in a place that’s part Priory, part Purgatory, and where the wildest fiction can tell the soberest truth.

‘It is dark, dirty, grim and confusing – in a very good way. It’s also warm, humane, funny and mischievous’ Jeremy Hardy

‘A hilarious book that starts with a rather weird premise about the afterlife and takes it to brilliant, eventually emotionally wrecking places. It is almost indescribably good’ Elliott Downing

‘Ambitious and entertaining in every sense. Just fabulous. One of the funniest books I have read in a long time’ The Last World Book Review

Paperback: 384pp

Published: Lightning Books (May 2024)

ISBN: 9781785634000