Meet John Cromer, one of the most unusual heroes in modern fiction. If the minority is always right then John is practically infallible. Growing up disabled and gay in the 1950s, circumstances force John from an early age to develop an intense and vivid internal world. As his character develops, this ability to transcend external circumstance through his own strength of character proves invaluable. Extremely funny and incredibly poignant, this is a major new novel from a writer at the height of his powers.'I'm not sure I can claim to have taken my place in the human alphabet...I'm more like an optional accent or specialised piece of punctuation, hard to track down on the typewriter or computer keyboard...'

"Cedilla" continues the history of John Cromer begun by "Pilcrow", described by "The London Review of Books" as 'peculiar, original, utterly idiosyncratic' and by "The Sunday Times" as 'truly exhilarating'. These huge and sparkling books are particularly surprising coming from a writer of previously (let's be tactful) modest productivity, who had seemed stubbornly attached to small forms. Now the alleged miniaturist has rumbled into the literary traffic in his monster truck, and seems determined to overtake Proust's cork-lined limousine while it's stopped at the lights. John Cromer is the weakest hero in literature - unless he's one of the strongest. In "Cedilla" he launches himself into the wider world of mainstream education, and comes upon deeper joys, subtler setbacks. The tone and texture of the two books is similar, but their emotional worlds are very different. The slow unfolding of themes is perhaps closer to Indian classical music than the Western tradition - raga/saga, anyone? This isn't an epic novel as such things are normally understood, to be sure. It contains no physical battles and the bare minimum of travel, yet surely it qualifies. None of the reviews of "Pilcrow" explicitly compared it to a coral reef made of a billion tiny Crunchie bars, but that was the drift of opinion. Page by page, "Cedilla" too provides unfailing pleasure. It's the book you can read between meals without ruining your appetite.

'We make lazy assumptions about the centre of things and its location. Who's to say that the centre of things isn't in a corner, way over there?''People in authority are always saying you should know your rights, though I've noticed they don't much enjoy it when you do.''Nobody can be a person twenty-fours hours a day - it just can't be done. At night the sets dissolve and the performance falls away. We're off the books.'That's John Cromer talking, in this fresh instalment of his lifelong saga. For John, embarking on a new stage of life in 1970s Cambridge, charm and wit aren't just assets, they are survival skills. It may be a case of John against the world. If so, don't be in too much of a hurry to bet on the world.Conjuring a remarkable voice and mind, Caret is a feast of a novel, served on a succession of small plates, each portion providing an adult's daily intake of literary nourishment. Reading it - like any encounter with John Cromer—is guaranteed to help you work, rest and play.'Thank god for John Cromer and his creator Adam Mars-Jones, one of the funniest, most self-aware characters in English fiction, whose minute observations on everything from constipation to lust are a source of unexpected delight.' Linda Grant