Sod the Bitches

Challenging themes that haunt the Berkoff canon are ever-present in this startling novel: his luxurious verbosity; his counterpoint of crude street patter and elegiac proclamation; sex wars; class wars; dislocation and abandonment of love in a thankless and unyielding world. This is a powerful, divisive and brutally honest novel that will inspire, enrage and provoke - and live on long after the final word.'In this way I was able to come home, to smile, to be relieved and even happy ... until the bitter, incessant nag in the groin came again, and I lay there in torment next to a body I couldn't begin to touch, couldn't begin to go near. And we both lay there under the thundering darkness waiting for sleep, waiting to be carried to another domain where the sirens and the nymphs touch and caress you in sweet dreams.'John is an actor. He is a man. A man who wants. A man who needs. A man who takes. And he takes from those who always expect him to give. To give them love, loyalty, affection - to give them his soul, his loyalty, his life. Why can't they just let him thrive? Why can't they understand the desires and passions that drive him? Why is he a man alone? John has crossed the line from performance to reality, from stage to street, from imagination to visceral breath - and he needs to wrest control before all is lost.REVIEWS'Steven Berkoff has never been one to shy away from a controversial subject' - Daisy Bowie Sell, Time Out