The Insult - by Rupert Thomson (Paperback)

About the Book

This "noir" novel envisions reality itself as a consensual hallucination, to which readers succumb at their own risk. After begin struck by a random bullet, Martin Bloom is permanently blinded. But just as he is adjusting to his new condition, Martin discovers that, at night, he can see. His ambiguous gift sends him out into a nocturnal world where he learns that even a blind man can be suspected of murder--and may be guilty of something worse.

Book Synopsis

"We are in the dark side of the brain--full of grief and deliciously strange comedy. I've never read anything like it."
--Michael Ondaatje

With this eerie, provocative, and utterly original novel, Rupert Thomson takes the psychological thriller into unexplored territory. Martin Blom is walking toward his car in a supermarket parking lot when a single random bullet pierces his brain. From that moment he is blind--his doctor says permanently. But then one evening Martin discovers what is either a genuine miracle or a delusion suffered occasionally by the newly blind: in the dark, he can see.

Armed with this ambiguous gift, Thomson's protagonist enters a nocturnal world of strip clubs and sleazy hotels. In that world, an alluring young woman may give herself to the one man she thinks is unable to see her, only to vanish inexplicably. In that world, a blind man may become a murder suspect. And in the gorgeously disorienting world of The Insult, reality itself is a consensual hallucination. And you succumb to it at your own risk.

"Reads like an unholy collaboration between Oliver Sacks and Edgar Allan Poe." --Time Out

"Thomson is a master stylist, a virtuoso of the hallucinatory image, a writer with a dark vision and a bright future." --Washington Post

About the Author

Rupert Thomson was born in Eastbourne, East Sussex, England, and studied Medieval History and Political Thought at the University of Cambridge. His highly acclaimed works include novels Secrecy, The Five Gates of Hell, Death of a Murderer, The Book of Revelation, Soft!, and The Insult, and a memoir, This Party's Got to Stop. In 2015, Thomson was named a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He lives in London.