Notable Brain Of Maximilian Ponder, The (Shortlisted For Cost

SHORTLISTED FOR THE COSTA FIRST NOVEL AWARD 'Maximilian Ponder is lying face up, dead, on the dining table in his own front room. This is something you really should know, right from the start. 'Max would also have wanted you to know that this is a Henri II style, French, walnut extending dining table, standing on solid turned legs with fretwork decor to the middle, also with ebony and sandalwood inlay, designed by the French furniture maker Nicolas Rastin and probably dating from around 1900 ...' Maximilian Ponder shut himself away for thirty years in an attempt to record every memory he ever had. Now he lies dead, surrounded by his magnum opus - The Catalogue - an exhaustive set of notebooks and journals that he hopes will form the map of one human mind. But before his friend Adam Last can call the police and inform them of Max's death, one rather gruesome task remains in order for Max's project to be complete. Interspersed with sections from The Catalogue, Adam tells the story of the man he knew - a man whose life changed dramatically the day he buried a dead labrador and fought a duel with his father. What emerges is both the story of a friendship, and also of a lifelong obsession, a quest to understand the human mind, memory and what constitutes a life. Review: A book which pulls off its strange premise with charm, wit and devil-may-care storytelling. Huge fun to read, sneakily sad in places. A tragicomic - but mostly comic - meditation on memory and humanity, which will stay with you for a long time -- Mark Watson Original, touching and extremely well-written...I'm delighted to have read it. It's made me feel good about the Not The Booker all over again * Guardian * Exceptional, quirky debut.. the poetically perfect underlying message of the story is found in the often late night (often drug-fuelled) conversations * Press Association * An original and quirky debut * BIG ISSUE IN THE NORTH * Written with gusto - a daring, quirky tale. * GOOD BOOK GUIDE * Prizes: Short-listed for Costa Prize; First Novel Award 2013 (UK). Author Biography: John Ironmonger was born and grew up in East Africa. He has a doctorate in zoology, and was once an expert on freshwater leeches. He is the author of The Good Zoo Guide and the novels The Notable Brain of Maximilian Ponder (shortlisted for the 2012 Costa First Novel Prize and the Guardian's Not the Booker Prize), The Coincidence Authority and The Whale at the End of the World (an international bestseller). He has also been part of a world record team for speed reading Shakespeare, has driven across the Sahara in a GBP100 banger, and once met Jared Diamond in a forest in the middle of Sumatra.