Venomous Lumpsucker

The irresistible new novel by the Booker-longlisted author Ned Beauman - a darkly funny and incisive zoological thriller for the age of Extinction Rebellion.

The venomous lumpsucker is the most intelligent fish on the planet. Or maybe it was the most intelligent fish on the planet. Because it might already be extinct. Nobody knows. And nobody cares. Except for two people.

Mining executive Mark Halyard has a prison cell waiting for him if that fish has gone for good. And biologist Karin Resaint needs it for her own darker purposes. They don't trust each other, but they're left with no choice but to team up, pursuing the lumpsucker across the strange landscapes of near-future Europe. On the way, they are drawn into a conspiracy far bigger than one ugly little fish.

Gripping and singular, Venomous Lumpsucker is a comedy about environmental devastation that asks: do we have it in us to avert the tragedy of mass extinction?

And also: do we really need to bother?

'A comic caper about our insanely decadent world careering through ecocide, Venomous Lumpsucker is bracingly, excoriatingly funny on our idiocy and the unquantifiable loss that we enable. It's also savagely, forensically serious on the reality of mass species loss, as illuminating as it is entertaining.' Martin MacInnes, author of Infinite Ground

(P) 2022 Hodder & Stoughton Limited