Hands On

Frederick Madison is the hard-drinking Hemingway of the modern poetry world. His estranged son Robert - once a Harvard Professor of Linguistics, now an Artificial Intelligence wizard for a multinational computer company - has always felt overshadowed by the domineering grand old man of letters.

When Robert is sent to England to develop a special program in Oxford, he realizes he has the perfect opportunity to extract a spectacular filial revenge. Determined to teach a computer to write like an angel (or his father…), Robert enters a confusing world of 'authentic fakery', little foreseeing the consequences. Part satire, part love story, Hands On is a fast-paced story of high tech and low motives, by a novelist described by The New York Times as "approximating the savagery of Evelyn Waugh."

Andrew Rosenheim is the author of seven novels, most recently Fear Itself and The Informant. He worked for many years in publishing, at both Oxford University Press and Penguin, and was a pioneer in the early development of electronic publishing in the 1980s. A native of Chicago, he has lived in England for thirty-five years, and lives near Oxford with his wife and twin daughters.