Swan Songs: A Novel

“Unfortunately making the greatest rap album of all time was to be put on hold as the insidious Jobcentre advisors had finally had enough of my shit. I would be forced to sign up to one of the town’s two recruitment agencies, or I would be starved of weed money.”

Leonard Swanson lives in an obscure north-western town — the kind that has a knack for swallowing you whole. He is supposed to be making the greatest rap album of all time, Swan Songs, but instead is forced to work at GENPHARM, one of the town’s factories, picking things up and putting them down for twelve hours in a giant white room.

Swan Songs follows Leonard as he works, quits, signs on, and tours the country, eventually becoming embroiled in a conspiracy surrounding his old employer that runs to the heart of British society and beyond, all while battling with identity and reality, as the line between what is real and what is not becomes increasingly blurred.

Part Alan Sillitoe and part William Burroughs, UK rapper Lee Scott’s debut novel, partially based on his own experiences of becoming a rapper in Runcorn, is an experimental and humorous modern satire about the perils of being a hip-hop visionary far from the beaten track…