Lionel Asbo: State of England

A wickedly funny, grotesquely exaggerated portrait of modern Britain, as seen through the rise of one of Amis’s most outrageous characters.

In the brutal concrete landscape of Diston Town, teenage Des Pepperdine is doing his best to stay invisible—reading poetry, avoiding trouble, and nursing a dangerous secret. But his guardian, Lionel Asbo, is a ferocious presence: a pit-bull-breeding, tabloid-devouring career criminal with a gift for violence and a hatred of books. When Lionel wins the lottery from inside prison and becomes an overnight millionaire, Des is dragged along for the ride, caught between survival, loyalty, and the faint hope of something better.

With savage humor and a Dickensian eye for the grotesque, Lionel Asbo: State of England captures a nation enthralled by celebrity and excess. It’s a darkly comic portrait of a young man coming of age in a culture that confuses notoriety with success, and a meditation on the quiet courage it takes to resist chaos from within your own home.