The Town

"The Town is an impressive debut; perhaps most so for how Prescott maintains its singular and beguiling mood for the entirety of the novel—part comic satire, part existential horror. Prescott effectively conveys the sense that history and art seem incapable of reflecting the calamity of our present moment."—Zach Ravas, zyzzyva

"A gentle, if gnawing, safari of the existential dread on which Australia is built."—The Saturday Paper (Australia)

"A bizarre novel—a seance for Kafka, Walser and Calvino. Shaun Prescott has written an ominous work of absurdity."—Catherine Lacey, author of Nobody is Ever Missing and The Answers

"The Town moves with a gentle command amid the obvious reference points of Calvino, Kafka and Ave, but it also invokes the less-celebrated novels of Steve Erickson and Rex Warner. Like them, Prescott seeks the universal in a meticulous paraphrase of the here and now, and finds the dislocation hiding in locality to show us just how lost we really may be."—Jonathan Letham, author of Motherless Brooklyn and The Fortress of Solitude

"The Town really got under my skin. There's a deceptive lightness to Prescott's style, so this is a book that creeps up on the reader: all of a sudden you're swept away by, even bound to, this thing that's so mournful, intense and unsettling. It will stay with me."—Lisa McInerney, author of The Blood Miracles

"Shaun Prescott's debut novel is a dense singularity, an exploration of the idea of nowhere as the centre of the world, and a stark paean to loneliness, entropy and marginal existence—sustained by the kind of slow, luminous prose that feels like the equivalent of staring straight into the sun."—David Keenan, author of England's Hidden Reverse