Promotional Information

Read by the author and with a soundtrack by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis

About the Author

The lead singer of The Birthday Party, The Bad Seeds and Grinderman, Cave has been performing music for more than 30 years. He has collaborated with Kylie Minogue, PJ Harvey and many others. As well as working with Warren Ellis on the soundtrack for the film of The Road, by Cormac McCarthy and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, he also wrote the screenplay for the film The Proposition. His debut novel And the Ass Saw the Angel was published in 1989. Born in Australia, Cave now lives in Brighton.

Reviews

* Put Cormac McCarthy, Franz Kafka and Benny Hill together in a Brighton seaside guesthouse and they might just come up with The Death of Bunny Munro. As it stands though, this novel emerges emphatically as the work of one of the great cross-genre storytellers of our age; a compulsive read possessing all Nick Cave's trademark horror and humanity, often thinly disguised in a galloping, playful romp. -- IRVINE WELSH * Cocksman, Salesman, Deadman; Bunny Munro might not be Everyman, but every man ought to read this book. And read it half in stitches, half in tears, and with the same horror and the same recognition that you usually only face in the mirror on the morning after. Or maybe that's just this man. -- DAVID PEACE * Nick Cave will obviously live forever, just because the Devil's scared of him. Rolling Stone * Cave stands as one of the great writers on love of our era. -- WILL SELF * This seven disk edition feature the man himself reading it to you like some demented babysitter. What's more, it's been specially recorded to sound brilliant through headphone; by brilliant we mean terrifying. NME * Welcome to the audiobook initiative of the year. Time Out

The protagonist of Cave's pleasantly demented second novel, set in England, is living out a porno: door-to-door lotion salesman Bunny Munro spends his days seducing invariably attractive women, servicing both their sexual and moisturizing needs. His wife's suicide, though, threatens to derail Bunny's amorous adventures, as he can't shake the feeling that he might somehow be responsible. Another new obstacle is the need to look after his nine-year-old son, Bunny Jr. In an effort to escape the creepiness of the apartment he shared with his wife, Bunny takes his son on the road, teaching him the ropes of salesmanship. Meanwhile, a man in red face paint and plastic devil horns accosts women in northern England before a murderous turn sends him journeying south. Bunny's deterioration from swaggering Lothario to sputtering pity case suggests he is carrying around more guilt than he cares to admit, and his obsessive behavior, while a bit of a stretch, allows for an interesting portrait of modern family dynamics. Cave's bawdy humor, along with a gallows whimsy that will be familiar to fans of his music, elevate the novel from what might otherwise be a one-note adventure. (Sept.) Copyright 2009 Reed Business Information.

In 1989 Melbourne-born musician, Nick Cave, released his debut novel And the Ass Saw the Angel-a lyrically dense (and some would suggest impenetrable) book, steeped in biblical imagery, violence and wry humour. Twenty years later the much anticipated second novel, The Death of Bunny Munro, is a very different beast altogether. While still bearing the usual Cave hallmarks-the dark wit, lyricism and violence-The Death of Bunny Munro is a bawdy romp of a novel. If Dante had ever written a 'Carry On' film it may have turned out something like The Death of Bunny Munro. Bunny Munro is a self-styled ladies' man with a wife and a nine-yearold son, Bunny Junior. Narcissistic and swelling with hubris and lustful desires, Bunny Munro sells beauty products from door-to-door on the south coast of England and sets out to seduce lonely housewives- and pretty much every woman he meets-along the way. On the death of his wife he is set adrift and hits the road, hawking his wares for one final time with Bunny Junior in the passenger seat. As is evident from his songs, his earlier (and now this) novel, Cave has skilfully mastered the wry humour and grotesquery of the grand guignol. There is much to find repulsive in the character of Bunny Munro-and many of the characters in this book-as he descends into his own libidinous hell and to his inevitable end. Foreboding, trepidation and the reader's sympathies accompany him, and Bunny Junior, to the last page. In the quiffed Bunny Munro (rarely in literature has one lock of hair possessed such personality), Cave has created a compelling character. The world Nick Cave paints isn't pretty yet there is such beauty to be found in it-in the humour and pain and the hope, in his storms and his losers, in his lyricism and prose. While the Kylie Minogue and Avril Lavigne fixation in the novel, at times, wears a little thin, Cave's masterful and poetic command of language and his wry observations makes this a delight to read, as do the many laugh-out-loud moments in this otherwise dark tale. Nick Cave fans have been waiting a long time for this second novel. They, no doubt, will not be disappointed. Deborah Crabtree is a Melbourne-based fiction writer and bookseller