Some people have a bad hair day. For Algy Tuckett, his hair is the least of his problems. Everything for him has gone into disarray, not only his own appearance, but his surroundings and the people he knows. In The Auguste, Keith Blackburn describes the plight of a man for whom normality has ceased to exist.

One morning in 1932, Algernon Tuckett, 22-years-old, junior clerk at Gurney and Barman’s wool mill awakes to find that he has been transformed into a clown. What is more, he is an old decrepit clown, reeking of whisky. Surprisingly unperturbed by this, he attempts to make it to his office, or the doctor’s, or out of a bad dream. But, despite his best efforts, he becomes way-laid at every turn, and embroiled in a series of surrealistic episodes that are completely out of his control. Familiar places take on new aspects, and people who he knows are transformed into totally different characters. In his quest to return to normality he finds himself unable to escape from this spectacle.

Despite the clear theme of alienation, detachment and impotence in the face of an unforgiving world, The Auguste is not a tortured tale in the Kafka mould; indeed, Algy himself owes more to the hapless comic hero of 1950s British film comedy than he does to the tortured existential souls we tend to associate with such probing works. In its playfulness, The Auguste is closer to the works of Boris Vian and Flann O’Brien, both in terms of the absurd settings and events, and in wordplay that questions our relationship with reality.

Keith Blackburn was born in Wakefield, Yorkshire and studied Art at Wakefields Technical and Art college. He has written three novels prior to The Auguste, as well as a collection of short stories. Since 1989 he has worked as a full time writer and painter and now lives in Holland, with short intervals in England.

The Auguste is a rich and intricate novel that manages to portray an absurd world which, through its ’pataphysical logic, seems to make sense. And Keith Blackburn, in his control of the form, has managed a rare literary feat of balancing poeticity with a driving narrative.