Books by B S Johnson

With an introduction by the writer Toby Litt.The eponymous Albert is an architect by training but a supply teacher out of necessity. Feeling that he is failing at both, and haunted by a failed love affair, he begins to question what he wants to achieve. Using a number of original narrative techniques Johnson attempts to reproduce life (and its travails) as closely as possible through fiction, while at the same time revelling in the impossibility of such a task.A passionate advocate for the avant-garde, B S Johnson said of the acerbically comic and exuberant Albert Angelo that it was where he 'really discovered what he should be doing'. And on page 163 of this extraordinary book is one of the most surprising lines in English fiction. But you should start at the beginning.

Christie Malry is a simple man. As a young accounts clerk at a confectionery factory in London he learns the principles of Double-Entry Bookkeeping. Frustrated by the petty injustices that beset his life - particularly those caused by the behaviour of authority figures - he determines a unique way to settle his grievances: a system of moral double-entry bookkeeping. So, for every offence society commits against him, Christie exacts recompense. 'Every Debit must have its Credit, the First Golden Rule' of the system. All accounts are to be settled, and they are - in the most alarming way.Christie Malry's Own Double-Entry, the last novel to be published in B S Johnson's lifetime, is undoubtedly his funniest.