The second pants into a mic, or recites lines about masochism. Three women crawl sullenly about the stage, speechless.Luca Silvestrini's To The Bone is the brightest of these pieces. River Carmalt and Vicki Manderson, stripped to their underwear, are carried on stage like dolls On the soundtrack, we hear their voices They arrange their movements to fit the tape They talk their way into positions, giggle, fall out It's too long, but the performances are lively.. "Neither stress nor evil can reach me here," he purrs in Sarita's cosy flat. Then Marko turns up.The meat of this novel is the uneasy, menacing menage ?rois that Marko forces upon Lang. Sarita reciprocates his carnal hunger with no interest in his public profile; he makes the effort to ingratiate himself with Miro, her school-age son who poignantly misses his absent father, Marko.From a drifting sense that both he and his show have passed their prime, Lang emerges rejuvenated to record a successful sixth season. Short but absorbing, Lang is more character study than thriller, observed by Konrad Wendell, who grew up in Lang's shadow but won modest success of his own as a writer.

He drives around Helsinki in his Celica, a "divorce car" purchased once he saw his second marriage sliding down the pan, wherein lies the rub. Priding himself on an acute sensitivity to cultural trends, the hero of Kjall West?novel basks in the spotlight as the urbane host of The Blue Hour, the highbrow talk show on Finnish television that has made him a household name Rounding out his status is a string of intellectual novels. Lang is not that good at relationships. Lang's first encounter with Sarita is caustic: strangers rubbing up the wrong way in a pizzeria, before recognising a mutual loneliness that leads to sudden intimacy Their affair is eager, stimulating and fulfilling for Lang. At university he was encouraged to write, and Johnson's debut novel Travelling People was published in 1963, followed by his first collection of poetry a year later.

He also wrote radio and stage plays, which were largely unperformed, and films mostly for television. He was a sports reporter, and also wrote book reviews.B S Johnson was a depressive, and committed suicide at the age of 39 But despite black periods he was regarded as a likeable man. He failed his 11-plus exam, and went on to work in a bank, taking Latin classes at night, which helped gain him a place at university. He eventually achieved a degree in English at King's College in 1959.Johnson married an upper middle-class woman, Virginia Kimpton, whose parents paid for their house, and they had a son and daughter. Years of media adulation have ossified Christian Lang's vanity and arrogance, smoothing out internal conflicts beneath the brilliant glare of studio lights. Johnson gained a reputation as a leading avant-garde writer of the 1960s though his experimental style.His novel Tristram Shandy offered black and shaded pages, and the pages of Albert Angelo, published in 1964, contained a hole giving readers a look into the future.Elisa Bray. He was a difficult, bad-tempered personality who was increasingly being chased by his creditors," said Ms MacGregor.Coe, who was born in Birmingham and educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, has written two previous biographies; of the Hollywood icons Humphrey Bogart and James Stewart.He said that he began writing non-fiction first, aged 11, before turning to fiction at the age of 15.The life of an avant-garde and eccentric writerBryan Stanley Johnson was born into a working-class family in Hammersmith in 1933.