Paul Murray wrings every drop of humour and despair out of life, mermaids, M-theory, the poetry of Robert Graves and the mystery of the human heart.

Ruprecht Van Doren is an overweight genius whose hobbies include very difficult maths and the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence. ‘Skippy’ Juster is his roommate. In the grand old Dublin institution that is Seabrook College for Boys, nobody pays either of them much attention. But when Skippy falls for Lori, the frisbee-playing siren from the girls’ school next door, suddenly all kinds of people take an interest. Including Carl, part-time drug-dealer and full-time school psychopath.

Longlisted
The Man Booker Prize 2010
Published by
Penguin
Publication date
Paul Murray

Paul Murray

About the Author

Paul Murray studied English at Trinity College Dublin, but it took a Catalan businessmen he was teaching in Barcelona to point out ‘the many faults in my grammar I had not known about hitherto’. 
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