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BIBLIOGRAPHY

ISBN: 9781842431023
Price: £9.99
Casing: Paperback
Format: B (198 x 129mm)
Extent: 256pp
Rights: UK & South Africa
Pub. Date: January 2008

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

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Tom Robbins has been called "a vital natural resource" by The Portland Oregonian, "one of the wildest and most entertaining novelists in the world" by the FT, and "the most dangerous writer in the world today" by Fernanda Pivano of Italy's Corriere della Sera. A Southerner by birth, Robbins has lived in and around Seattle since 1962. His novels include Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates, Jitterbug Perfume, Still Life With Woodpecker, Skinny Legs And All and Half Asleep In Frog Pajamas.
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ABOUT THE BOOK

Imagine that there are American MIAs who chose to remain missing after the Vietnam War.

Imagine that there is a family in which four generations of strong, alluring women have shared a mysterious connection to an outlandish figure from Japanese folklore.

Imagine just those things (don't even try to imagine the love story) and you'll have a foretaste of Tom Robbins's eighth and perhaps most beautifully crafted novel—a work as timeless as myth yet as topical as the latest international threat.

On one level, this is a book about identity, masquerade and disguise—about "the false moustache of the world"—but neither the mists of Laos nor the smog of Bangkok, neither the overcast of Seattle nor the fog of San Francisco, neither the murk of the intelligence community nor the mummery of the circus can obscure the linguistic phosphor that illuminates the pages of Villa Incognito.

A female fan once wrote to Tom Robbins: "Your books make me think, they make me laugh, they make me horny and they make me aware of the wonder of everything in life."

RELATED FEATURES

• Villa Incognito - An Excerpt
• Villa Incognito nominated for the 2005 IMPAC Award

CRITICAL ACCLAIM

'Robbins' latest salad of absurdist drama, philosophical musings and observational comedy'
- Laurence Phelan, The Independent [read the full review]

'Funny, challenging and mystical'
- The Daily Mail

'a surreal parable written from the perspective of a southeast Asian badger'
- Alfred Hickling, The Guardian [read the full review]

'fans will lap it up'
- Chris Power, The Times [read the full review]

'what his view of American foreign policy is verges on the unknowable'
- Emma Hagestadt, The Independent [read the full review]

'there's a lot of athletic sex and love of drugs and manly camaraderie in these pages'
- Carolyn See, Washington Post [read the full review]

'vintage Tom Robbins'
- Jackie Pray, USA Today [read the full review]

'indescribably delicious'
- Mark Graham, Rocky Mountain Times [read the full review]

'great humor, delightful dialogue and sharp commentary'
- D Hinkley, New York Daily News [read the full review]

'a brash, playful, BS-free zone, a delightful kaleidoscope of canniness, gusto and chutzpah'
- Daneet Steffens, Toronto Globe and Mail [read the full review]

'wacky whirlwind of a novel'
- Linda Castellitto, Bookpage.com [read the full review]

'No one else makes readers laugh as hard as he makes them think, while leaving them open-mouthed at his audacity'
- Ron Bernas, Detroit Free Press [read the full review]

'Villa Incognito is a complex book, that proves the world needs Tom Robbins to offer fresh and glorious insight - with no reservations whatsoever - about those little pieces of humanity and society that flummox us most'
- Nikki Tranter, Pop Matters [read the full review]

'a dizzying sandwich of characterization, philosophizing and digression'
- Eileen Zimmerman-Nicol, Bookreporter.com [read the full review]

'his novels are never about what they are about'
- Tim Menees, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette [read the full review]

'Impossibly imaginative.'
- Vanity Fair

'Ebullient, irreverent, hilarious...ribald fairytale meets Apocalypse Now '
- St Louis Post Dispatch