What links the Investment Bank of Torabundo, www.myhotswaitress.com (yes, hots with an s, don’t ask), an art heist, a novel called For the Love of a Clown, a four-year-old boy named after TV detective Remington Steele, a lonely French banker, a tiny Pacific island, and a pest control business run by an ex-KGB man?
While marooned at his banking job in the bewilderingly damp and insular realm known as Ireland, Claude Martingale is approached by a down-on-his-luck author, Paul, looking for his next great subject. Claude finds that his life gets steadily more exciting under Paul’s fictionalizing influence; he even falls in love with a beautiful waitress. But Paul’s plan is not what it seems-and neither is Claude’s employer, the Bank of Torabundo, which inflates through dodgy takeovers and derivatives-trading until… well, you can probably guess how that shakes out.
The Mark and the Void is a stirring examination of the deceptions carried out in the names of art, love and commerce – and is also probably the funniest novel ever written about a financial crisis.
ISBN 9780241953860
