From the wickedly funny author of Submarine comes a hilarious new tragicomedy - a screwball tale of millennial angst, pre-midlife crises and one man's valiant quest to come of age in his thirties.'Blisteringly funny and brimming with caustic charm - a joyous diagnosis of our modern ills that made me laugh out loud even when it was breaking my heart' Paul Murray, author of Skippy DiesRay is not a bad guy. He mostly did not cheat on his heavily pregnant wife. He only sometimes despises every one of his friends. His career as a freelance tech journalist is dismal but he dreams of making a difference one day. But Ray is about to learn that his special talent is for making things worse.Brace yourself for an encounter with the modern everyman. Enter the world of ironic misanthropy and semi-ironic underachievement, of competitively sensitive men, catastrophic open marriages, and lots of Internet righteousness. With lacerating wit and wry affection, Joe Dunthorne dissects the urban millennial psyche of a man too old to be an actual millennial.'Every lost generation needs its memorial and now at last we have The Adulterants. It's very sad and very funny and written with an innocence that in fact is diabolical' Adam Thirlwell, author of Lurid and Cute