The ballad of Lee Cotton

'I grow up rural with flies, delta dust, forebodings and a shovel for my callused hands' Born to an Icelandic father and a black mother Lee Cotton grows up and extraordinary boy, with extraordinary gifts.

His story is one of the most unusual you will ever read...'Make sure you lay your hands on a copy of The Ballad of Lee Cotton.

You're unlikely to read a more effervescent, more uplifting, more original novel this year...brilliantly conceived, wonderfully written, heart-stoppingly involving; it propels our hero into a picaresque life so remarkable you are left agog at the writer's imagination and skill.

Time and again during this novel, I let out a figurative gasp at what Wilson was trying to pull off - only to be amazed that he managed it, and with such panache.

It is apparent that few of Wilson's contemporaries can match him for sheer storytelling inventiveness' Martyn Bedford, Literary Review