'The funniest book I have ever read' Steve Martin

Sitting down to write a book about his hero D.H. Lawrence, Geoff Dyer finds himself compelled to write about anything else. He is in fact compelled to do more or less anything else instead of write. In Sicily he is too preoccupied by his hatred of seafood to follow the great writer's footsteps; in Mexico he cannot get beyond a drug-induced erotic fantasy on a nudist beach . . . And yet, incredibly, this attempt to write a 'sober academic study' reveals the hold Lawrence and his work still exert on us today.

Out of Sheer Rage is a complete one-off, a richly comic study of the combination of bad temper, procrastination and the uncanny power of obliquity.

"An intriguing, magnetic, genre-rattling book" - * The Times *

"Marvellous . . . a glorious truant from study . . . gives a better picture of (Lawrence) than any biography I know." - * Guardian *

"A masterpiece" - * Mail on Sunday *

"If there was a prize for the year's funniest book then it would win hands down" - * Independent on Sunday *

"Quite possibly the best living writer in Britain" - * Daily Telegraph *

"[Out of Sheer Rage] gets the full Canongate Canons treatment from its new Edinburgh publishers this month; happy, happy news if ever there was any, O.O.S.R is vintage Dyer, and well worthy of this upgrade to 'modern classic' status." - * Dazed and Confused *

"Reading this book is the very opposite of a waste of time. It is an education and a delight" - * Guardian *