The Hurtle of Hell

An atheist comedy featuring God and a confused young man from Hackney. When gay, pleasure-seeking Stefano Cartwright is almost killed by a wave while at the beach, his journey up a tunnel of light convinces him that God exists after all, and he may need to change his ways if he is not to end up in hell. When God happens to look down his celestial telescope and see Stefano, he is obliged to pay unprecedented attention to an obscure planet in a distant galaxy, and ends up on the greatest adventure of his multi-eon existence. The Hurtle of Hell combines a tender, human story of rejection and reconnection with an utterly original and often very funny theological thought-experiment, in an entrancing fable that is both mischievous and big-hearted.

Simon Edge was born in Chester and read philosophy at Cambridge University. He was editor of the pioneering London paper Capital Gay before becoming a gossip columnist on the Evening Standard and then a feature writer on the Daily Express, where he was also a theatre critic for many years. In addition he has written for The Times, The Guardian, The Independent, Daily Telegraph, Daily Star, Private Eye, New Statesman, Tribune and Attitude, where he was a contributing editor. He has been a regular broadcaster on BBC Radio 5 Live. Simon was on the inaugural intake of City University's MA in Creative Writing and subsequently taught on that course as a visiting lecturer. He lives in Suffolk.