Busy Being Born

Description

Busy Being Born charts the rise and fall of a young graduate working in the sex trade. Read wide-eyed as Lady Trocknell introduces our hero to the pleasures of service, recoil at the antics of a bevy of bankers, and share in the sorrow of his eventual fall from grace. Humanity is laid bare and dissected in this extraordinary, fictionalised autobiography where intellect, compassion, and outrageous flights of fantasy somehow work together to create literary magic.

Set in 1980s London, each chapter recreates another episode in the author's journey through the dark underbelly of human desire. However, the portrayal of sex, while real and true, is also all analogy: a visceral means of recounting other societal excesses like the rise of money to Godlike status.

Clever, provocative, and resilient, Busy Being Born is a living gauntlet where the reader is as likely to laugh as to cry.

“Busy Being Born is strangely beautiful and Seidler a genuine powerful new talent.”

Mark Booth, editor at Hodder & Stoughton

“Seidler is a gifted writer. His new book deserves a wide audience for its imaginative and powerful writing that pulls you in and leaves you wanting more.”

Andrew Trimbee, former Daily Telegraph journalist and author of The Inshallah Paper.

Son of a casino boss and a courtesan, Laurence Seidler grew up in Africa before studying History at Cambridge. He pursued numerous professions including TV ad director, journalist, architect, robotics developer, scrap metal dealer and sex worker. Laurence now lives as a recluse with his wife, son, and various reptiles in the Sierra Nevada mountains of Andalucía, where he writes full time. Busy Being Born is his first English novel.