Richard Major publishes illustrated novel

Exeter alumnus Richard Major (1989, Theology) has published an illustrated novel, Parricide. The book is the second volume of the Misdemeanours of Dr Felix Culpepper series, the first, Quintember, having been met with critical acclaim when it was published in 2016 and shortlisted for the 2017 People’s Book Prize.

Parricide once again follows the exploits of Dr Felix Culpepper, tutor in Classics at St Wygfortis’ College, Cambridge, and assassin-at-large for the British Establishment. In this new, wintry installment of his doings, we hear about bull-fighting, the Manchester Blitz, Dominican friars, ossifrages, the Princes in the Tower (the appalling truth can be told at last), about high table, mother-, father-, sister- and nephew-slaying – illustrated with Victorian photographs, a linocut by the Countess of Verulam and a bosky map by Alack Newman.

Richard Major’s “elegant, witty Gothic fairy-tales for adults” are unlike anything else. Parricide is a well-ordered but dazzling labyrinth of tales, all centred on the reprobate killer-intellectual Culpepper. While it is more than a historical novel, it has a commanding sweep in time (the present, the Spanish Civil War, the Middle Age,  the Victorians) and place (Oxford, African jungle, the Scottish isles). Parricide is a more ambitious piece of work than its predecessor, Quintember. It reveals the underlying moral seriousness of an author who has been called “the wildest comic novelist working in English today”.

You can find out more about Parricide and order a copy here.