The Liar [Paperback]

Stephen Fry's breathtakingly outrageous debut novel is by turns eccentric, shocking, brilliantly comic and achingly romantic.

Adrian Healey loves to lie. He does it all the time. Every minute, every moment. And worse, he does it wonderfully, imaginatively, brilliantly. He lies to buck the system, to express his contempt for convention, but mostly because he just plain likes to. It’s fun; it’s high camp. He invents a lost pornographic novel by Charles Dickens, and for himself a career as a Piccadilly rent boy hireable by the hour. But Adrian’s lies eventually bring realworld danger, as he finds himself caught up in the machinations of a shadowy network that puts his own life at risk. A dazzling, outrageous first novel that has delighted liars everywhere.Praise for The Liar

“Smutty, naughty and outrageously hilarious . . . Brace yourselves for a dickens of a wicked good time.”
—Boston Globe

“The spirits of Oscar Wilde and Evelyn Waugh glower benignly over this very funny first novel . . . An ingenious plot filled with surprises and glittering with hilarious, often indecent inventions.”
—The New York Times

“A quite brilliant first novel.”
—Sunday Times
 
“Brilliantly entertaining and consistently outrageous.”
—Daily Mail
 
“Sublime.”
—Cosmopolitan
 
“Wicked.”
—Elle
 
“Transforms the sophomoric into the sophisticated.”
—Los Angeles Times

“Fry’s jokes have a ring of seriousness . . . A witty and entertaining send-up.”
—San Francisco Chronicle

“Mr. Fry’s book is wonderfully funny and (as funny weren’t enough) absorbingly plotted. His charaló.