The Tale of Raw Head and Bloody Bones

Set in the mid-18th century, The Tale of Raw Head and Bloody Bones is the story of a young man, Tristan Hunt who, at the age of 20, goes up to London to study anatomy and surgery at St Thomas's. Since childhood, Tristan has been subject to sudden, explosive episodes of extreme violence. Considered a genius and a physician of extraordinary promise, he is also, alas, psychotic.

Torn between the body (his uncontrollable lust for causing pain) and the mind (his insatiable intellectual curiosity) Tristan's struggle for self-control mirrors and personifies the contradictions of the Enlightenment, and the emergence of reason as the absolute standard.

A lost, motherless boy, a sadistic monster, a philosopher, fantasist, visionary, Tristan's story is funny, moving and frightening. With touches of both Patrick Suskind's Perfume and Brett Easton Ellis's American Psycho, The Tale of Raw Head and Bloody Bones will never be forgotten by those who dare to read it.