ABSTRACT
Born in 1942 in Surrey, Michael Westlake has so far published four novels and a book of theory. One Zero and the Night Controller (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980) consists of two first-person discourses belonging to a minicab driver, One Zero, and Angelica, his night controller (who comes on duty when the day controller goes off). One Zero is enlisted by a customer, Mr Machiavelli, in a quest to find his missing girlfriend, Kaffee; One Zero succeeds, but also finds his way to (or back to) a relationship with Angelica. The Utopian (Carcanet, 1989) also consists of a two discourses, that of Mesmer Partridge, a young man living both in Stockport in 1979 and in a communist matriarchy in 2411, and that of Dr Reed, a Harley Street psychoanalyst who is trying to cure Mesmer of his utopian delusions.
