Hunting Captain Henley

By Ken Pratt

Young Billy Queen is angry. He’s going to find the English officer who bullied his dad in the army and probably kill him. What he doesn’t yet know is that his search will take him to deepest India and that it will become an intellectual journey from which there will be no turning back. Hunting Captain Henley tracks the progress of a tormented boy who turns into a subversive man hell-bent on vengeance for a covert military incident in Suez 1952.

Reviews of Hunting Captain Henley

'It is rare to find a novel that works equally as a study of a man’s moral and psychological disintegration, a state of the nation address, and a political thriller. Ken Pratt has written a brave book that does not shirk from looking into the darkness at the heart of both a nation and a particular ethically- damaged individual… The novel has an extraordinary linguistic richness and that makes it a thrilling and inventive read.' — Alan Bissett

'Henley is a cross between Moby Dick and Malibou Stork Nightmares. It impressed me a lot, blew me away in places. At its best it’s as good a Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.' — Willy Maley, Professor of Renaissance Stalis, University of Glasgow

'This is a bold and uncompromising piece of work. The shift in perspective over the course of the novel is particularly effective and there’s a distinctive quality to this voice, an energy and a layer of dramatic irony which contains some hugely satisfying formal choices.' — Frances Poet, Literary Manager, National Theatre of Scotland