Following hard on the heels of tragedy and a botched suicide attempt, The Cuckoo of Awareness has flown in to the Cotswolds to rescue the life of Tom Atkins – whether he likes it or not.

If that wasn’t bad enough, at the same time a ‘Black Swan’ event – the ‘Battle of Wellington Square’ – the most uplifting peacetime civilian massacres in history – was coming to the doorstep of his home in ‘Cheltenhamshire’.

The 8th Wonder of the World is about to explode, GCHQ has gone rogue, the Machine of Happiness has been invented, Barry the ‘Birdman’ Jones, the UK’s leading twitcher is on his way to ‘Welly,’ local hero Bob ‘Sitting Bull’ Brady is on the warpath, Wongo the Wongolian Wonder Dog is just Wongoing around, and the Moom Monsters are on their way to Murria…

All of this amounts to just one thing: Andrew Brush’s debut novel The Cuckoo of Awareness is a delightfully unpredictable riot of black absurdism – delivered in an imaginative rapid-fire poetic prose style – that is at once very funny, profound and affecting.