From the author of the bestselling Captain Corelli’s Mandolin.

“This is my farewell embrace to the polymorphous people of Earlsfield, with whom I lived for ten years... Dedicated to the living and dead of Earlsfield, which was definitely the centre of the world when I was living in it.” – Louis de Bernières

Taking his inspiration from Dylan Thomas’ Under Milk Wood, de Bernières chose to celebrate his ten years in the south London suburb, living above a small shop that had been by turns an outlet for oversized naughty clothes for transvestites, a West Indian hairdresser and a junk shop, by writing of the people that he had known and come to love in his time there. Brilliantly capturing the myriad voices of modern Britain with their different rhythms of speech and accents, their humour and their tragedy, jokes and gossip, this tour de force takes us to the heart of a community

and its spirit - the lives of its people. This work was first broadcast on BBC radio in 1998 and was performed at

the Dylan Thomas Centre, Swansea in 1999 and 2000.