Marabou Stork Nightmares

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Roy Strang's real life makes his worst nightmares look like vacations. In a hospital room in Edinburgh Roy Strang lies in a coma--which doesn't save him from reliving the sordid developments that brought him to this state. He seems at times to be engaged in a strange quest in a surrealist Africa to eradicate the evil predator-scavenger bird the marabou stork before it drives away the peace-loving flamingos from Lake Torto. But Roy's hallucinatory adventures keep being interrupted by troubling memories of his bizarre family, the housing project in which he grew up, a disastrous emigration to South Africa, and his youthful life of casual brutality as a club-hopping soccer thug. Meanwhile his parents and his nurse bombard his inert form with inane conversation, even more inane pop music, and intimate massage... As these worlds collide, Marabou Stork Nightmares mutates into the sort of combination of violence, pathos, and outrageous hilarity that only Irvine Welsh can pull off.