Deadkidsongs

Paperback original. 8vo. 401pp. Illustrated card covers. B/w map.

Signed by Author to title page.

Author's fourth novel. A journey into the dark heart of boyhood, as four pre-pubescent boys play war games deep in the English countryside. Litt used his home town of Ampthill in Bedfordshire (renamed Amplewick) as the 1970's setting for the novel. Nursing a penchant for naming his books in alphabetical order, this novel – which appropriates the title of Gustav Mahler's 1904 song cycle Kindertotenlieder – begins with a D.

An adherent to the 'New Puritans' literary movement, which pledged to restore simplicity and relevance to British fiction, Litt contributed a short story to its founding Bible All Hail the New Puritans (2000), edited by Matt Thorne and Nicholas Blincoe. Listed in 2003 by Granta magazine as one of the 20 'Best of Young British Novelists'. "[T]he most exciting new British novel I've read this year... extraordinarily haunting". –John Preston, Sunday Telegraph