The Unfinished Harauld Hughes: Richard Ayoade's Hilarious Fictional Quest to Rescue a Mythical Mid-Century Playwright from Obscurity

'So funny - Nabokov meets Spinal Tap.' STEPHEN MERCHANT

'Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant.' TIM KEY

'Absolutely miraculous.' JESSE EISENBERG

'A brain-swirlingly funny quest.' ROBERT POPPER

Richard Ayoade's fictional quest to rescue Harauld Hughes - the almost mythical mid-century playwright - from obscurity.

The gifted filmmaker, corduroy activist and amateur dentist, Richard Ayoade, first chanced upon a copy of The Two-Hander Trilogy by Harauld Hughes in a second-hand bookshop. At first startled by his uncanny resemblance to the author's photo, he opened the volume and was electrified. Terse, aggressive, and elliptical, what was true of Ayoade was also true of Hughes's writing, which encompassed stage, screen, and some of the shortest poems ever published.

Ayoade embarked on a documentary, The Unfinished Harauld Hughes, to understand the unfathomable collapse of Hughes's final film O Bedlam! O Bedlam!, taking us deep inside the mind of the most furious British writer since the Boer War.

This is the story of the story of that quest.

Readers love The Unfinished Harauld Hughes:

"Buy it, it's hilarious."

"Intelligent humour at its best."

"Terrific, funny, nuts!"

"I was snorting with laughter."

"Very clever, very funny."

Author: Richard Ayoade
Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Published: 09/09/2025
Pages: 256
Weight: 0.35lbs
Size: 7.60h x 5.00w x 0.60d
ISBN: 9780571339174