FIRST OF FINANCIAL TIMES BEST DEBUT NOVELS

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"There are hints of The Great Gatsby and whiffs of Trainspotting, with a deliciously strong, bitter aftertaste." - Ian Sansom, Times Literary Supplement

'A gloriously vivid debut. This thrilling novel about the ascent of Young British Artists thrums with a boisterous authenticity.'– Nick Duerden, i newspaper

'Bouncers, villains, derelicts, millionaires and strippers people a tale of monstrous vitality, which nevertheless maintains a passionate faith in the transformative quality of art.' -Suzi Feay, Financial Times

"Art captures the hedonism of the time. There is something irresistible about the dirty, depraved world it presents." - Mark Mason, The Spectator magazine

"The novel is as rich on historical atmosphere as it is on dark humour and rhetorical flair. Brimming with satire and packed with contemporary resonance, Art is a brilliantly zany, poignant piece of work."-Olly Gruner, Camden New Journal

‘Art perfectly captures the car-crash nature of the 90s YBA scene. You just can’t look away as the black comedy unfolds.’ - Tom McCarthy, novelist short-listed twice for the Booker Prize for his novels C and Satin Island

‘Art is all about a creative moment in inner London which has assumed mythic status, A brilliant novel about high art and low life in Hoxton’ - Nick Barlay, author of four novels including Hooky Gear and Curvy Lovebox

‘Where a lesser talent would skewer the Hoxton scene, Peter Carty crucifies it.’-Stewart Home, conceptual artist and cult novelist

A visionary curator sets up a gallery in a decaying warehouse in Hoxton, bringing together a group of radical young artists at a seminal moment in British art. But as they produce stellar new work and prepare to storm the bastions of the art establishment, ruthless property developers are gentrifying the area and pushing them out. Meanwhile, a tidal wave of cocaine and organised crime threatens everything.

Art is a dark satire about the birth of Young British Artists in the early 1990s, faithfully reflecting the period and its creative obsessions. Illuminating, moving and blackly funny, it mercilessly exposes the pretensions of fine art and high theory ... as well as the unrestrained hedonism and low life that ran alongside.