Lowboy

The brilliant new novel by one of Granta’s Best Young American Novelists, 2007

A teenager is lost in the New York subway.

Above ground Ali Lateef of the NYPD is assigned the missing persons case. Lateef learns that the boy—real name William but who refers to himself as Lowboy—was finishing a sentence in psychiatric care after pushing his closest friend onto the tracks of the subway. With the grudging help of Lowboy’s mother, Violet, Lateef must find Lowboy before his medication wears off and before he becomes a danger to himself and others.

With each passing hour Lowboy is driven ever deeper into the tunnels and chambers of the secret city underneath Manhattan, further from the world of light and reason, and closer to the moment of his great surrender.

Praise for Lowboy:

‘Fast-paced and vivid.’

The Times

‘A pacey page-turner, but one which succeeds in reflecting convincingly the turmoil and disorientation of a schizophrenic mind without getting bogged down in the science. John Wray’s prose is at once spare and powerful, comic and profound, and as his protagonist’s fate unfolds, the suspense rises until the very last line.’

Irish News

‘There is wild, wicked music throughout these pages.’

New York Times

‘A brilliantly imagined underworld beneath Manhattan and an unusually vivid portrait of a young man about to be overwhelmed by his psychotic imagination. It’s very well done and has been rapturously received by critics on both sides of the Atlantic.’

Literary Review

‘Uncompromising [and] … excellent. A meticulously constructed novel, immensely satisfying in the perfect, precise beat of its plot.’

New York Times Book Review