James Scudamore

"Born in one of Sao Paulo's teeming 'favelas', Ludo makes a remarkable journey from one side of the city's impermeable social divide to the other. Rescued and raised by the plutocrat Ze Generoso, Ludo has spent his young life in the gated, guarded community of the super rich, shuffling from country estate to city in the family helicopter. Now, after a failed stint at an illustrious business school in America, Ludo has returned to Sao Paulo, where he works at a vacuous communications company that is busily marketing a new chain of MaxiBudget supermarkets to the city's poorest residents. Ludo is thus forced to promote his adopted lifestyle to the slums from which he emerged and navigate his own uncomfortable place in a cavernous class divide. To make matters vastly more complicated, he has developed an obsessive, adulterous love for his adoptive sister, whose husband is his only friend."--Front flap.

Rich in South American colour, this cleverly crafted novel deals with storytelling itself - the motivations for spinning a yarn and the consequences of taking a tale too farAnti, a quiet English boy living in Quito, Ecuador, strikes up a friendship with flamboyant classmate Fabian, who is everything Anti isn't: handsome, athletic and popular. What's more, he lives with his rakish Uncle Suarez, while Anti is stuck in the dull ex-pat world inhabited by his parents.Suarez, a storyteller par excellence, infects the boys with his passion for outlandish tales, and before long their relationship becomes one conducted entirely through the medium of storytelling. One subject, however, is taboo: Fabian's parents. But when details surrounding their disappearance begin to emerge, Anti decides to console his friend with a story suggesting that Fabian's mother may be living at a bizarre hospital on the coast for patients with memory loss. With confused emotions and reality losing its tenuous grip, the boys embark on a quixotic voyage across Ecuador in search of an 'Amnesia Clinic' that may, or may not exist.

Perilously ill, Jasper Scriven spends his days roaming the wards of a derelict psychiatric hospital on England's southeast coast. His daughter Cleo works in London as a news editor, making palatable stories of the world's events and trying to stay one step ahead of her demons.