dennis milholland

A very black comedy

St Patrick once had to rid Liams homeland of snakes. But the young lads granddad catches him playing with one. In front of his sisters full-length mirror. Wearing her Sunday frock. And so, it becomes a foregone conclusion that Liam and his friend will someday have to go away. Forever. Because that was how it worked in Ireland of the fifties.

Nonetheless, once on the loose and making the best of a lonely situation, he arrives in Berlin in the mid-sixties. Thats when he hooks up with a mad band of Drag Queens headed by Dachau Dolly and helps spark the pink revolution of 1968. In the West. But his real passion lies in frolicking through obscure pastures of the communist East.

Find out what the long-term aftermath of one such outing is, when, following his raucously drunken, madly camp, rendition of a popular torch song on the stairs of the underground station at Friedrichstrae, the patrolling soldiers round him up and deliver him to their commander.

Thats in Degrees of Provocation, a novel of anger.