Skippy Dies
Paul Murray
Penguin Books Ltd
<p><b>LONGLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2010</b></p><p><b></b></p><p><b>'An unforgettably exuberant saga' Emma Donoghue, <i>Daily Telegraph</i></b></p><p><b></b></p><p><b>'A comic epic. Murray is a brilliant comic writer, but also humane and touching' David Nicholls, <i>Guardian</i></b></p><p></p><p>'Skippy and Ruprecht are having a doughnut-eating race one evening when Skippy turns purple and falls off his chair . . .'</p><p></p><p>And so begins this epic, tragic, comic, brilliant novel set in and around Dublin's Seabrook College for Boys. Principally concerning the lives, loves, mistakes and triumphs of overweight maths-whiz Ruprecht Van Doren and his roommate Daniel 'Skippy' Juster, it features a frisbee-throwing siren called Lori, the joys (and horrors) of first love, the use and blatant misuse of prescription drugs, Carl (the official school psychopath), various attempts to unravel string theory . . . while at the same time exploring the very deepest mysteries of...</p>