Beatty insistently finds poetry in the projects dignity on the street' Guardian Beatty's blunt impious streetwise eloquence is transfixing' New York Times The writing here is seamless & teeming with momentum' New York Times Book Review Winston Tuffy' Foshay is a 19-year-old 24-stone player-king' to a hapless gang in Spanish Harlem a denizen who breaks jaws & shoots dogs His best friend is a disabled Muslim man who wants to rob banks his guiding light is an ex-hippie Asian woman who worked for Malcolm X & his wife he married over the phone whilst in jail When the frustrated Tuffy agrees to run for City Council so begins a zany riotous concoction of nonstop hip-hop chatter & brilliant mainstream social satire as the indomitable Beatty again demonstrates why he is hailed as one of the shrewdest cultural commentators & hilarious cutups of his generation