Pandemonium

The bumbling and eternally famished Grafton Everest appointed as the first Australian Secretary-General of the United Nations? A secret game of Australian Rules football skilfully played by Tutsis and Dinkas in a tiny African state? In this novel our hapless hero reaches the culmination of his haphazard career. Despite Grafton's fervent hope that it will be a purely honorary position, he finds himself forced to actively head an organisation not only made ineffective by its Byzantine organisation, but threatened by a deadly conspiracy within its own ranks. Our woebegone world leader not only endures attempted kidnappings and assassination but finds that a mysterious young woman who has been assigned to write his biography is possibly not who or what she seems. On top of this unwanted intrigue, Grafton discovers that, despite having no desire to save the world, or anything else, he is an essential part of a plan, implemented by a rough-edged Australian diplomat, to avert a looming global disaster - a plan which, strangely, seems to involve Australian Rules football. 'Pandemonium is a work of comic brilliance, a perfect consummation of the uproarious Grafton Everest series' - Nigel Marsh, Smart, Stupid Sixty 'Grafton Everest is a wonderful creation whom I would place without question in the ranks of Phillip Roth's Portnoy and Kingsley Amis's Lucky Jim.' - Barry Humphries