LET GO MY HAND

The new novel from Ed Docx is a kind of comedy-drama – a British father and son on a road trip to Dignitas.

A British father and son are on a darkly comic road trip across Europe. Lou is driving his terminally ill father Larry to a specialized clinic in Zurich, a destination neither is sure they can, or even want to, reach. His two much-older twin brothers are absent - either as a statement of protest or as a simple function of denial. But, as the miles roll on, first Ralph, and finally Jack burst into the intimate space of their clapped out 1980s VW van. There, in this mobile relic of their childhoods, and in a series of increasingly anarchic and drunken escapades, the older boys confront the long-buried traumas of their youth: the damage their overbearing father wreaked on the family and the rivalries he set in motion, buried deep in the family narrative. But as secrets finally come to light, the life-affirming love between the four men is restored.

In Let Go My Hand, Ed Docx returns with a novel brimming with crazy humour and poignancy, with strong echoes of King Lear.

Docx burst onto the literary scene with his highly-acclaimed debut The Calligrapher (2004). His second novel, Self Help (Pravda in the US) won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize and was long-listed for the Man Booker.