'Kennard's distinctive voice – surreal, funny, anxious, always overthinking, and cringingly self-deprecating – has made him one of the most widely liked and imitated British poets under forty' Tristram Fane Saunders, TLSNone of the Old Testament prophets was especially happy or confident in their calling, but Jonah was the only one who rejected it outright, disobeying direct instruction from God and literally running away. In The Book of Jonah, Luke Kennard transforms the unique and awkward position Jonah's story occupies in scripture – part dream, part joke, part provocation – into a madcap picaresque which marries the sacred and the absurd.Though Jonah's encounter with the whale is most commonly interpreted as the story of a reluctant prophet being punished by his maker, Kennard's Jonah is more wily business traveller than seer. Taking his instruction instead from non-governmental organizations, arts development agencies...

A RADIO 4 BOOK AT BEDTIME What's standing between you and success? What do you do with a generation who've had everything, but still can't grow up? Welcome to The Transition. While taking part in The Transition you and your partner will spend six months living under the supervision of your mentors, two successful adults of a slightly older generation. Freed from your financial responsibilities, you will be coached through the key areas of the scheme – Employment, Nutrition, Responsibility, Relationship, Finances and Self-Respect – until you are ready to be reintegrated into adult society. At the end of your six months – who knows what discoveries you'll have made about yourself? The 'friends' you no longer need. The talents you'll have found time to nurture. The business you might have kick-started. Who knows where you'll be? 'A fresh, funny and gripping vision of the near future that rings frighteningly true' Joe Dunthorne, author of Submarine 'Terrific. Clever and funny and a...