True Tale of the Monster Billy Dean

Prize-winning children's author David Almond's first novel for grown-ups is set in a northeast England dystopia, devastated by terrorist attack. Billy Dean was born on the day of the outrage, the illegitimate son of the local Catholic priest. Billy has never been allowed outside his bedroom - his father's way of protecting him from the evils outside. He has no television and not even a window through which to view the outside world, all his knowledge of it filtered through his mother and the infrequent visits of his father, giving him a distorted, Biblical perspective. When Billy is eventually released, his naivety is interpreted as a kind of saintliness and he finds himself hailed as some kind of Messiah.