Busy Being Born

Author: Seidler, Laurence

London, Greater London

Published on 28 September 2024 by The Book Guild Ltd in the United Kingdom.

Paperback / softback | 320 pages
200 x 130 x 25 | 346g

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.