In 1985 Bret Easton Ellis shocked stunned & disturbed with his debut novel Less Than Zero. Published when he was just twenty-one this extraordinary & instantly infamous work has done more than simply define a genre it has become a rare thing: a cult classic & a timeless embodiment of the zeitgeist. It continues to be a landmark in the lives of successive generations of readers across the globe. Filled with relentless drinking in seamy bars & glamorous nightclubs wild drug-fuelled parties & dispassionate sexual encounters Less Than Zero -- narrated by Clay an eighteen-year-old student returning home to Los Angeles for Christmas -- is a fierce coming-of-age story justifiably celebrated for its unflinching depiction of hedonistic youth its brutal portrayal of the inexorable consequences of such moral depravity & its author's refusal to condone or chastise such behaviour. ' An extraordinarily accomplished first novel' New Yorker ' The Catcher in the Rye for the MTV generation' USA Today ' One of the most disturbing novels I've read in a long time. It possesses an unnerving air of documentary reality' Michiko Kakutani New York Times