People may very well think the worst after they read his novel, which is full of misanthropy ("I was grateful I wasn't ugly; I didn't have to strive for wealth to avoid a life of substandard sexual partners") and racial stereotyping ("in adolescence a lot of blacks, encouraged by the anomic rantings of rap music, adopt a sordid boorish persona . Bhupinder Puppy Singh Johal - handsome, rakish and spiritually disenfranchised - has left behind the immigrant neighbourhood of Southall to mix with the elite of metropolitan London society. He was state-school educated before going on to the University of Nottingham to read English and American literature.

From being people who could barely look one another in the eye when we began – so full of our own personal shame and angst were we – we ended the week hugging and declaring our love for each other, bidding each other weepy farewells with promises of staying in touch. As a child, I experienced a father who was by turns drunk, work-obsessed and a terrifying bully, and a depressed and resentful mother, prone to fits of stamping and ranting around the house, tearing her clothes and threatening suicide if I dared to be upset by her.Meditating on my father’s pain – so much greater and deeply buried than mine has ever been – I broke into heaving sobs. Puppy's day begins with smoking cigarettes and either hanging with his rich friends and taking drugs, or hanging with his loser friends and drinking alcohol. But walking into a fashionable bar in a fashionable part of east London, I suddenly realise I have no idea what (the rest of) Nirpal Singh Dhaliwal looks like. Dhaliwal's eyes, seen through his famously long eyelashes (both his book and his wife's mention them approvingly) glint with excitement.

Gritty and addictive - this is a view of London, and its inhabitants through the cynical eyes of a young Punjabi man. Actually I am halfway through this novel and I am amazed- extremely completely and utterly dazed by this glorius, dark, sexy yet vulgar, excruciatingly painful novel. Nirpal Sing Dhaliwal - John LawrenceLike many lonely people, I’ve often felt at my lowest when the rest of the world seems most happy – including sunny bank holidays, like this. Met Liz Jones in 2000, when she was the editor of Marie Claire and he was working as a radio journalist for the BBC; he was sent to interview her.Ecstasy brings out the best in them; they surrender, childlike, to the experience, limbs loose and free, faces glowing with joy.