This is not my favourite Sillitoe book. The author attempts humour in dealing with a nihilistic Balkan state. the concept of compiling a guidebook to such an area leads to a great deal of asides on the popular political memes of the time. ( )

This book seems to have fallen into complete obscurity and I don't suppose it will be back in print any time soon. This is as different a book from the works Alan Sillitoe is famous for as anything you could imagine. It's a comic dystopian novel about Nihilon, a country of state-regulated lawlessness, of , in fact, nihilism. Nihilon is a Balkan-like totalitarian state where anarchy and revolution are compulsory for all citizens.

Very few tourists ever come back from Nihilon, and none come back sane. Five writers are dispatched to the country, travelling by different routes, and charged with compiling a guidebook to the country. We follow their individual adventures as they inadvertently cause chaos and somehow find themselves caught up in the anti-Nihilonism revolution.

Although there are some really good passages, and some inspired satire of 1970s idealistic totalitarianism, the book doesn't really flow, the structure doesn't work until the last 50 pages when the protagonists come together, and some of the writing seems really awkward and disjointed, to me.

Having said that, and for all it's faults, this not a boring book, and I'm going to seek out more 'non-Nottingham' Sillitoe. ( )