John Lanchester's Whoops! Why Everyone Owes Everyone and No One Can Pay is the unbelievable true story of the economic crisis.

We are, to use a technical economic term, screwed. The cowboy capitalists had a party with everyone's money and now we're all paying for it. What went wrong? And will we learn our lesson - or just carry on as before, like celebrating surviving a heart attack with a packet of Rothmans?

John Lanchester travels with a cast of characters - including reckless banksters, snoozing regulators, complacent politicians, predatory lenders, credit-drunk spendthrifts, and innocent bystanders to understand deeply and genuinely what is happening and why we feel the way we do.

'Devastatingly funny ... the route map to the crazed world of contemporary finance we have all been waiting for'

  Will Self

'Bang on the money'

  Independent

'Explains the crisis in a way that actually sticks ... to my amazement, I finally grasp it'

  Janice Turner, The Times

'Endlessly witty ... will turn any reader into an expert within the space of 200 pages'

  Jonathan Coe

'Terrific ... there is no better guide to the crazy world of high finance'

  GQ

John Lanchester is a journalist, novelist and winner of the Whitbread First Novel Award. His fiction includes Mr Philips, The Debt to Pleasure and Capital. He is a regular contributor to the London Review of Books and the New Yorker, with a monthly column in Esquire.