Widespread Acclaim Across National Media

****Financial Times Best Debut Novels ****

****Independent’s Best New FiCTION****

‘There are whiffs of Gatsby and Trainspotting with a gloriously 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 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 Booker Prize

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.

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.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Peter Carty is an award-winning writer and journalist. After growing up on Merseyside he moved to London, where he was a close witness to the artistic explosion in Hoxton and Shoreditch. He writes about art and culture for publications including the Guardian, Financial Times and Independent. Some of his short fiction is on English literature syllabuses. Art is his first novel.