Book excerpt: A New York City hustler with a special gift for reeling in customers, Apollo, 'a pale skinned mulatto with a mournful mouth' strips at a gay sex theatre in Times Square. He is one of the most seductive and disturbing creations in recent American fiction. Unflinchingly describing the lives of hustlers, pimps, drug-addicts and transsexuals in 1990s Times Square, User speaks with the authentic voice of characters from the edge. This is a world filled with stark, hypnotic eroticism and mined with terrors peculiar to the subterranean city in the hours after midnight. A Queer Classic published in the UK and Australia for the first time. By the bestselling author of The Romanian, winner of the Prix de France. User is unmistakably brilliant' Los Angeles Times. 'Impressive, startling and eerie...hypnotically descriptive and powerfully rhythmic' Kirkus. 'User is a stunning novel. I both love and respect it even though parts of it challenge and disturb me' Matt Bates.