Book excerpt: Winner of the 2019 Fitzcarraldo Editions Novel Prize. 'I took one look at him, and I saw what he really wanted.' On the Sunday of his eighteenth birthday, in 1975, Colin takes a walk on Box Hill, a biker hang-out in Surrey. Timid, awkward, and very much out of his element, he accidentally trips over Ray, a biker taking a nap under a tree. Ray takes immediate control of the situation, and Colin moves in with him that night. A sizzling, sometimes shocking, and strangely tragic love story between two men, Box Hill is a stunning novel of desire and domination by one of Britain's most accomplished writers. 'Mars-Jones's prose is exceptionally nimble, dry, humorously restrained, very English, with a little Nabokovian velvet too. He can describe more or less anything and make it interesting.' -James Wood, London Review of Books 'A tender exploration of the love that truly dare not speak its name - that between master and slave. On his 18th birthday, Colin literally stumbles upon a strapping biker twice his age, and falls into a long-term relationship characterised by devotion, mystery, and submission. In plain unadorned prose, Mars-Jones shows us the tender, everyday nature of this. Self-deprecating, sad, and wise.' -Fiona McGregor 'I very much enjoyed Box Hill. It is a characteristic Mars-Jones mixture of the shocking, the endearing, the funny, and the sad, with an unforgettable narrator. The sociological detail is as ever acutely entertaining.' -Margaret Drabble