A man in full

Ten years ago, The Bonfire of the Vanities defined an era - and established Tom Wolfe as the prime fictional chronicler of America at its most outrageous and alive. Now the master is back with a coast-to-coast portrait of America on the cusp of the millennium. Bold, caustic and hilarious, The Stoics' Game spares no one as Wolfe dissects the insatiable greed, vanity and hunger for bearings that characterise today's USA. The setting is Atlanta, Georgia - a racially mixed, late-century boom-town full of fresh wealth, avid speculators and worldly-wise politicians. The protagonist is Charles Croker, once a fabled college football star, now a late-middle-aged Atlanta real estate entrepreneur-turned-conglomerate king whose expansionist ambitions and outsize ego have at last hit up against reality. Charlie has a 28, 0000-acre quail-shooting plantation, a young and demanding second wife - and a half-empty tower downtown with a staggering load of debt.