Mr Rinyo-Clacton's Offer

''Russell Hoban''s imagination knows no bounds ... darkly funny and profound'' The Times''You want to buy my death for a million pounds!'' Piccadilly Circus tube station is an unlikely location for a pact with the Devil, but this is where Jonathan Fitch first meets Mr Rinyo-Clacton. Devastated after his girlfriend Serafina has left him, Jonathan agrees that this mysterious stranger will pay him a million pounds for a year, if he agrees to die at the end of it. What could possibly go wrong?''A poignant and engaging fable of ownership and surrender'' Philip Hensher, Mail on Sunday''Nothing is accidental or optional in this jewelled clockwork egg of a book ... Hoban is a hugely skilled, moving and endlessly entertaining writer'' The Times Literary Supplement