Sartre's Sink - Tapa dura

'Pleasingly incongruous ... There's a wonderfully wild Hunter S. Thompson putting up a garden fence' Sunday Telegraph 'This brilliantly inventive DIY manual both parodies and celebrates great authors ... Crick is a brilliant literary ventriloquist ... next time you need to replace a light switch, seal the edge of a sink or put up a shelf, this is the book for you. And you can comfort yourself, as you toil, that at least you're in the company of great writers' Financial Times 'Hands-down droll' Guardian

For too long DIY books have suffered the neglect of the literary establishment. Finally, here in one volume, are the essential DIY tips of the world's greatest writers. Dostoyevsky tells of a young man employed by an elderly lady to retile her bathroom; Caesar puts up a shelf for his rebellious tribe of adolescenti; the existentialist hero of the Sartre pastiche is both disgusted and nauseated to discover in a blocked sink the revelation of his own condition. We also learn how to repair a dripping tap under Conrad's eyes, replace a window pane with a voyeuristic Milan Kundera, and hang wallpaper under the watchful eye of Mark Twain. Other handy hints include how to: replace a roof tile; remedy a squeaking floor board; remove a carpet stain and bleed a radiator, by writers including Bronte, Shakespeare, Duras, Salinger and Paul Auster. As in the companion book, Kafka's Soup, each piece is illustrated by a famous artist, including da Vinci, Hokusai and Rembrandt.