Cirrus@Austlit

'Get Fat is set in 2009, in the heart of the global financial crisis. Tasmanian Hans Brady, hard on his luck returns to his old haunt of Ladbroke Grove, West London, where he hits on the idea of a get rich quick plan. In search of old acquaintances, and easy money, he slips into a world of borderline criminality, drugs, and violence, that threatens to spin out of control, and bring him down with the city. A tapestry of characters: a DJ fixated on murder, the last child of the Spanish Republic of 1939, the gigolo son of diehard Ulster dissidents, and the untameable charlatan and chancer Hans Brady, reveal life on the periphery of tough times.'

Source: The People's Library.

'Awareness of this predicament dawns with a distant memory of being exhibited like a monkey in front of my peers. And the other kids being told I'd stay behind when they moved up a grade, probably til the end of time. It was lie a weird Japanese animation flick where someone puts a curse on the main character, and they're fucked for all time and forever. Years later I learnt the teacher has told my mum that I would never learn to read or write, that I was just dumb; it was as if I had never been anywhere or seen anything; it has the feel of Dostoyevsky's idiot about it.' (Introduction)

The author describes his experience with being called 'stupid' on account of his dyslexia ever since childhood, and the ways he pushed back against this definition.