The Human Script: A novel in 23 chromosomes

, Tom McCarthy, author of Man Booker shortlisted and , Book Smoke BookemStevoLondon in the spring of 2000: Chris Putnam, a young scientist working on the Human Genome Project, is grieving for the end of his first relationship and for the loss of his deeply religious and estranged father. Then Chris falls in love and his brother goes missing. Events take Chris on a journey from research labs via decadent art-scene parties and London's Theatreland to the stark loneliness of a psychiatric hospital and ultimately to a desperate decision. What Chris discovers about himself forces him to address his beliefs, his nature and even reality itself.In science, philosophy, literary theory and religion intertwine in a poignant and tragic love story that asked the question: What is it to be human?A profound masterpiece that lay hidden under the author's bed for more than a decade, readers of Tom McCarthy and David Mitchell will love this exciting debut that explores nature and nurture, faith and knowledge, freedom and fate, identity and reality and the nature of fiction itself.