The launch of Paul Stewart’s third novel, *The Book of Paul*, published by Armida Press, featuring a reading by the author.  

*The Book of Paul* continues the tragi-comic verve of *Of People and Things*, which Dr. Hannah Simpson of Edinburgh University described as a ‘page-turner’ in which the ‘prose is a delight’.  

In the latest work, Stewart retains the main characters of *Of People and Things* – the naïve narrator, Paul, and the enigmatic private detective, Mr. Samuels – but introduces a new supporting cast of eccentrics whose intentions towards Paul are far from clear.  

They seem friendly enough, but what do they want from him as he tries to get used to living in his newly inherited modern mansion? If only Mr Samuels were on hand to sort things out, but he is nowhere to be seen.  

Instead, Paul imagines what he might be up to as a mysterious woman, and a near fatal encounter, plunge Mr Samuels into what might be the most dangerous, and most personal, case of his career.  

Local readers might be able to recognize the unnamed city streets and dry landscape through which the novel moves. Indeed, hints of a certain Mediterranean island can be spotted on every page, making *The Book of Paul* an important contribution to the growing library of Anglo-Cypriot literature.  

Paul Stewart is Professor of Literature at the University of Nicosia. He has produced two previous novels, *Now Then* (Armida, 2014) and *Of People and Things* (Armida 2019) as well as a collection of poetry, *And Other Elsewheres* (2006).  

As an academic, he is the author of two monographs on Samuel Beckett – *Sex and Aesthetics in Samuel Beckett’s Works* (Palgrave, 2011) and *Zone of Evaporation: Samuel Beckett’s Disjunctions* (Rodopi, 2006) – as well as the co-editor of *Pop Beckett: Intersections with Popular Culture* (Ibidem, 2019) with David Pattie.