The Envy of Topshelf

by Kevin Mulligan

Welcome to Fizzle, an isolated, backward place teeming with crisis. It is a nation like none other on Earth, and to survive in it, citizens have developed a state of mind equally unmatched With an antic group of revolutionaries on a quest for truth (more or less), the termination of a great warrior caste, and a pair of exiled lovers, twinned in ambition (one has discovered the urge to write a beautiful, sublime poem, and the other desires to avoid hearing it), Fizzle is a state of constant flux. Add to the mix a500-year-old murder mystery, an offended comet aiming for vengeance, and an overseeing deity who delights in humanbewilderment, and you have the key ingredients of author Kevin Mulligan's visionary novel, The Envy of Topshelf.A 1,200-year-old monarchy has recently collapsed, and the result is two decades of civil chaos, toggling between the comicand the tragic. Just when the political leadership thinks it has finally achieved stability, havoc cries out for second helpings.The Envy of Topshelf is literary farce with an epic scope, Swiftianoutlandishness infused with slapstick urgency.

360 pages, Paperback

First published November 14, 2006