Skippy Dies

'Skippy and Ruprecht are having a doughnut-eating race one evening when Skippy turns purple and falls off his chair . . .'　 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 the human heart.

Paul Murray is the author of An Evening of Long Goodbyes, which was shortlisted for the Whitbread First Novel Award in 2003 and is published by Penguin. Skippy Dies is his second novel.