Heliopolis - James Scudamore

Born in a So Paulo shantytown, Ludo undergoes a remarkable transformation. Directed by forces beyond his control, he first leaves, then returns to the vast city of his birth but on the opposite side of its social divide.Now twenty-seven, he works for a vacuous 'communications company, marketing unwanted, unaffordable products aimed at the very underclass into which he was born. He has developed an obsessive, adulterous love for his adoptive sister, whose husband is his only friend. And he has an appetite that can never be satisfied.Welcome to the world of Heliopolis. By turns comic, violent and poignant, it is a rags-to-riches tale like no other the story of a man whose destiny moves him around like a chess piece, and risks taking him to the brink of madness and brutality.

James Scudamore was born in 1976 and grew up in Japan, Brazil and the UK. His first novel, The Amnesia Clinic, won the 2007 Somerset Maugham Award and was shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize. He lives in London.