The Family Arsenal

The Family Arsenal is a darkly comic novel of warped morals and disillusionment in South London by the award-winning writer Paul Theroux. In South London terrorists plot. . . Hood, a renegade American diplomat, envisions a new urban order in the opium for of his room. He flirts with terrorists, hoping to win their trust and respect. Mayo, his sometime bedmate, has just made a political statement - stealing a Flemish painting and negotiating publicity over this act with The Times. Murf the bomb-maker leaves his mark in red, scrawling `Arsenal Rule` across half the city`s walls, whilst his sixteen-year-old girlfriend, Brodie, bombs Euston and afterwards worries about her complexion.A novel of London lowlife and the dispossessed, and a powerful and violent thriller of disenchanted people.`A pleasure. . . with Theroux the thrills are never cheap and obvious` Guardian`One of the most evocative, intelligently crafted suspense novels in years - like the early fiction of Graham Greene. . . London has rarely looked dingier or more sinister...an assured success` The New York Times`Brilliant and haunting. . . the ingenious of the plot, the London setting. . . the trapped and interwoven people, and the balefully witty observation, have an undistracted force` ObserverAmerican travel writer Paul Theroux is known for the rich descriptions of people and places that is often streaked with his distinctive sense of irony; his novels and collected short stories, My Other Life, The Collected Stories, My Secret History, The Lower River, The Stranger at the Palazzo d`Oro, A Dead Hand, Millroy the Magician, The Elephanta Suite, Saint Jack, The Consul`s File, The Mosquito Coast, and his works of non-fiction, including the iconic The Great Railway Bazaar are available from Penguin.