Useless Tse

From Siang Lu, Miles Franklin–winning author of Ghost Cities, comes a riotously funny reimagining of Homer’s Odyssey, following a wayward father and son on a chaotic quest to reunite their family.

‘Siang Lu? Legend.’

—Bryan Brown

‘Someone make a movie of this, stat!’

—Chris Pang

‘Absolutely brilliant. An uproarious, smashingly fun take on The Odyssey you won’t soon forget. Siang’s imagination sings!’

—Elizabeth Gilbert

‘Riotous and relentless, profane and profound, darkly funny, and stealthily sweet, Useless Tse confirms Siang Lu as one of the most deliciously audacious writers working today.’

—Emily Maguire

‘Christopher Nolan could NEVER. Siang takes us on an Odyssey of useless men, but unlike Homer and Nolan, he doesn’t pretend that they are actually heroic. Gaming! Macau! Clubs! Cocaine! Awkward teenagers! Absent fathers! Ageing beauties! I love Siang’s brain and I love this book. It is stupid and so smart.’

—Madeleine Gray

‘I laughed all the way through. Precocious, playful and gloriously funny, it’s also unexpectedly tender and melancholy. Beneath the chaos, Siang Lu is asking a serious question about family: can we survive the failures of the people we love, and can they survive ours? A brilliant novel.’

—Shankari Chandran, Miles Franklin Award–winning author

‘Here comes useless Tse – varicose, bellicose, Bela Lugosi-like, hostage to his hairline …’

When his blubbering teenage son, Sonny, lands on his doorstep, Lincoln Tse finally decides to break his decade-long exile from Hong Kong. Over a day and a night, the Tse boys spin uselessly through the nightlife of Macau, dodging gangsters, strippers and drug dealers in an attempt to get back home to Penelope.

Meanwhile, Penelope Tse – actress, wife, mother – is caught in her own melancholic odyssey, writing and rewriting her memoirs while her lascivious publisher grows impatient …

In this raucous and ribald adaptation of Homer’s Odyssey, Siang Lu consolidates his place as one of the most inventive, dashing and flat-out fun novelists of our times.