The Accidental Collector

Guy Kennaway is a writer of fiction and memoir. He is best known for his novels ONE PEOPLE, about village life in Jamaica, BIRD BRAIN, about a bunch of optimistic pheasants, and for his memoir TIME TO GO about killing his mother (with her permission.). His most recent novel, THE ACCIDENTAL COLLECTOR, won the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction in 2021. His most recent memoir is FOOT NOTES, a broad comedy about race and nationality which he wrote with his relative Hussein Sharif.'In all my writing my aim is to delight and amuse,' Kennaway has said. 'Hopefully I make people laugh out loud. Laughter is our most effective weapon in the battle against the difficulties and struggles of life. If I can transport my reader to a happy, joyful world, my mission is successful.'

Set in the world of contemporary art, Guy Kennaway's new novel delivers his trademark absurdities and laugh out loud moments.As the globe's most successful super-dealer, Herman Gertsch spent his charmed life jettiing between his galleries in Zurich, London and New York, fawned over by artists, curators, politicians and the uber-rich.As Herman's empire grew, nothing seemed to get in his way, until he made the calamitous decision to open a gallery in a rural English backwater. Here, Herman encountered John 'Brother' Burn, a penniless hippy known as the slipperiest man in south Somerset, and therefore the western hemisphere.In the riotous comedy of errors that follows, Kennaway pours mistaken identity, Amazonian tribesmen, Swiss food, DMT, Arab Royalty, million dollar paintings and worthless tat onto a spin painting of a story that dazzles with surprises and leaves you feeling reassuringly warm about art and life.

Guy Kennaway's fifth book is a comedy triumph, a natural successor top the novels of George Macdonald Fraser and Tom Sharpe.