The Age of Anxiety

The debut novel by Pete Townshend, one of the world’s greatest rock stars.

‘a cracking story about sex and drugs and rock ‘n’ roll’ - Mail on Sunday EVENT

‘A dazzling whirligig of a novel, featuring reclusive rock stars-turned-seers, visions of heaven and hell, young musical pretenders, artists and groupies’ - Daily Express

‘Setting his novel in the milieu he knows in all its excess, Townshend directs a cast of memorable characters while examining themes of creativity, genius, music and love.’ - Daily Mail

‘The writing is vivid and fans will enjoy guessing which bits of The Who’s history Townshend drew upon’ - Daily Mirror

‘the scope of The Age of Anxiety is broader than first appears: this modern-day fable dwells on creativity and madness’ - Radio Times

A former rock star disappears on the Cumberland moors. When his wife finds him, she discovers he has become a hermit and a painter of apocalyptic visions.

An art dealer has drug-induced visions of demonic faces swirling in a bedstead and soon his wife disappears, nowhere to be found.

A beautiful Irish girl who has stabbed her father to death is determined to seduce her best friend’s husband.

A young composer begins to experience aural hallucinations, expressions of the fear and anxiety of the people of London. He constructs a maze in his back garden.

Driven by passion and musical ambition, events spiral out of control - good drugs and bad drugs, loves lost and found, families broken apart and reunited.

Conceived jointly as an opera, The Age of Anxiety deals with mythic and operatic themes. Hallucinations and soundscapes haunt this novel, which on one level is an extended meditation on manic genius and the dark art of creativity.