Although many critics have compared his novels to those of Franz Kafka, Magnus Mills is perhaps still best known as the bus driver whose first novel, The Restraint of Beasts (1998), was short-listed for the prestigious Booker Prize in 1998, placing Mills among such literary notables as Beryl Bainbridge, Julian Barnes, Patrick McCabe, and Ian McEwan. While McEwan won the award that year for his novel Amsterdam, the publicity associated with a bus driver writing novels in his spare time catapulted Mills into the literary world. Mills's celebrity was enhanced when British newspapers published the rumor that he had received a £1 million advance for The Restraint of Beasts. Mills later revealed that he and his agent initiated the rumor to spark publicity about the novel, for which he had in fact received a £10,000 advance. Despite such sudden, unexpected, and slightly dubious notoriety, Mills is a serious novelist who has been...