Photograph of the ram Pennine Rangers Black Jack by Justine Lester
Neil Astley's second novel is a politically provocative farce, a rollicking romp of a read, in which a talking sheep has the last word and the whole world listens.
A mad scientist has given a cloned sheep his own gene for human intelligence. Matching his creator's cunning, the plucky ram educates himself in secret, learning language and human ways while planning his escape from the laboratory. Once at large, he takes on fanatics, terrorists, multinationals and the army — as well as Holly, a cloned ewe trained in honeytrap espionage — as he plots the downfall of the Batty fundamentalists in the Men's Republic of Battymanistan who turned his donor parent into doner kebab.
The Sheep Who Changed the World is an outrageously picaresque black-sheep comedy which follows the fortunes and foibles of the crafty ram as he confronts his dual nature as both sheep and man. The sheep soon discovers that the only way to bring the absurd human world into harmony with his own totally logical ovine metaphysics is by getting rid of everything he finds ridiculous.
Neil Astley's The End of My Tether was shortlisted for the Whitbread First Novel award in 2002: 'Brilliantly readable, wildly funny and macabre — a scorching analysis of the way we live now' (Helen Dunmore).
'A tour de force, addressing topical and pertinent issues in a wholly originaland powerful way. Funny, challenging, provocative, harrowing. Above all else,angry.' (Whitbread Award judges Joanna Trollope, Bonnie Greer and James Daunt)
'A work of daunting ambition and massive imagination – often bizarre,gleefully irreverent, grotesque or delightful.’Independent on Sunday‘Deeply strange and highly original.' The Times
'A classic of British political fiction.' Morning Star
The Sheep Who Changed the World costs £8.99 and was published in July 2005.
ISBN: 978-1-873226-75-9
The Sheep Who Changed the World costs £8.99 and has ISBN 1-873226-75-6. It was published in July 2005.
NEIL ASTLEY is editor of Bloodaxe Books, which he founded in 1978.
His books include two poetry collections and several Bloodaxe anthologies, including
Staying Alive: real poems from unreal times (2002),
Pleased to See Me: 69 very sexy poems (2002),
Do Not Go Gentle: poems for funerals (2003),
Being Alive: the sequel to Staying Alive (2004) and
Passionfood: 100 Love Poems (2005).
He has published two novels, The End of My Tether (Flambard, 2002; Scribner, 2003), which was shortlisted for the Whitbread First Novel Award, and The Sheep Who Changed the World (Flambard, 2005). He received an Eric Gregory Award for his poetry and was given a D.Litt from Newcastle University for his work with Bloodaxe Books. He lives in Northumberland.
Astley gave a controversial lecture on the state of British poetry at StAnza, Scotland's poetry festival, in St Andrews in March 2005.
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