"Edward St Aubyn, "perhaps the most brilliant novelist of his generation" (Alan Hollinghurst), author of the internationally acclaimed Patrick Melrose novels, gives us his own great King Lear, a sharp, satirical, outrageously entertaining novel of loyalty, betrayal, corporate greed, and the wisdom that shines through the accumulating indignities of age. Dunbar is off his meds. Recently-retired Canadian media tycoon Henry Dunbar, who made his name through ruthless deals and alliances, is schlepped off to a sanatorium by his greedy, sadistic elder daughters and their conniving personal physician bent on divesting him of his company and seizing his substantial assets. Smelling a rat, Dunbar's recently-estranged but still loyal youngest daughter enlists her father's most trusted advisor to unwind the conspiracy, but with a board meeting to decide the future just days away, will their help come too late? The once power-hungry head of a global media corporation, clinging to sanity, must team up with a disgraced alcoholic comedian to break out of the asylum and somehow reinstate himself as the head of his empire before his daughters and business rivals ruin him for ever. St Aubyn's Lear is a compact, darkly comic, staggeringly human tour de force from one of the most acclaimed literary novelists working today. Like the Melrose novels, the dialogue is sharp, the characters unforgettable and the humour weaves between dark and subtle to wickedly outrageous. But amid the clear-eyed view of the foibles and frailties of man, is great tenderness. For all the acerbic wit (not to mention the tragic pathos of Dunbar's fall), this novel has a lot of heart."-- Provided by publisher.