The breakthrough novel from one of the greatest comic writers in the language – one of the twenty selected by Granta as the Best of Young British Writers 2003.

Some people follow the stars. Some people follow the soaps. Some people follow rare birds, or obscure bands, or the form, or the football.

Wesley prefers not to follow. He thinks that to follow anything too assiduously is a sign of weakness. Wesley is a prankster, a maverick, a charismatic manipulator, an accidental murderer who longs to live his life anonymously. But he can't. It is his awful destiny to be hotly pursued – secretly stalked, obsessively hunted – by a disparate group of oddballs he calls The Behindlings. Their motivations? Love, boredom, hatred, revenge.