Sputnik Caledonia

Robbie Coyle is an imaginative kid. He wants so badly to become Scotland's first cosmonaut that he tries to teach himself Russian and trains for space exploration in the cupboard under the sink. But the place to which his fantasies later take him is far from the safety of his suburban childhood. In a communist state, in a closed, bleak town, the mysterious Red Star heralds his discovery of cruelty and of love, and the possibility that the most passionate of dreams may only be a chimera . . . `Sputnik Caledonia should leave you breathless with admiration. A quantum leap forward for the Scottish novel' Scotland on Sunday `A brio of a book . . . One for the boys, big and little - and for those of us who wonder just what does go on inside a boy's head' Spectator `Andrew Crumey has fused a thrilling personal narrative with quantum mechanics in a way that somehow looks easy . . . Never has astrophysics seemed so touching and funny' Daily Telegraph `There are echoes here of Alasdair Gray's Lanark; echoes of Jonathan Coe's What a Carve Up! . . . A real haunting triumph' Observer

Andrew Crumey has a PhD in theoretical physics and is literary editor of Scotland On Sunday. His novels have been translated widely, and have won several prizes.