'Astonishing' Stephen Fry
'Exceptional' Douglas Stuart, author of the Booker Prize-winning SHUGGIE BAIN
'Now is the time for this book' DBC Pierre, author of the Booker Prize-winning VERNON GOD LITTLE
'Funny. Disturbing. Brilliant' Lily Allen

Funny, smart, damaged, Tom is lost in the machinery of the British mental health system, talking to a voice no one else can hear; the voice of Malamock, the Octopus God - sometimes loving, sometimes cruel, but always there to fill his life with meaning. Once an outstanding law student, Tom is now cared for by his long-suffering sister Tess, who encourages him into an experimental drugs trial that promises to silence the voice forever. The Octopus God, however, does not take kindly to being threatened...

Deeply moving and tragi-comic, The Octopus Man is a bravura literary performance that asks fundamental questions about belief and love.

"Magnificent novel... beautifully rendered and very funny. The bedraggled England here is as vivid as Jez Butterworth's version in Jerusalem. Gibson is surely the playwright's heir in vision and wit... You will be hooked, you will laugh and possibly cry. And you will know by page four that this hilarious and compassionate novel really matters." - THE SPECTATOR

"Gibson... has achieved something remarkable... full of jokes, capers, black ironies and a wild juxtaposition between the mundane and the transcendental." - Book of the Month in THE OLDIE

"Deliriously good!" - ES MAGAZINE

"Jasper Gibson's bravura new novel is timely and revelatory... Gibson skilfully combines black comedy with a compassionate and searching examination of what madness is and whether "normal" life is itself a state of mind." - THE OBSERVER

"The Octopus Man was a joy to read. I cried with laughter and I just plain cried. It is one of the wittiest and most humane pictures of a person and their mind - a timely conversation about mental health from within the perspective of the subject. It's a beautiful book and so incredibly funny. It was astounding to me how funny it was sometimes." - JOHNNY FLYNN

"A man suffering from schizophrenia doesn`t sound like it has comic potential, but this novel shows good storytelling can always confound expectations." - TIMES BOOKS NEWSLETTER

"An engaging novel about a man with a voice in his head evokes the radical politics of the anti-psychiatry movement." - GUARDIAN

"A compassionate, witty novel about being lost in the maze of the British mental health system." - THE INDEPENDENT

"Cleverly written . . . very funny, and it can be interpreted in a number of different ways" - Sydney Morning Herald