Magnus Mills’s debut novel was nominated for the Booker prize, but he still loves his day job as a bus driver.

“Lunchtime at Café Express, York Way, King’s Cross. Stocky workmen in luminous jackets drink mugs of tea. A radio plays bouzouki music. In a corner, one of Britain’s most original novelists bends over pie, chips and peas on his break from driving the 390.”

“Magnus Mills, 55, found fame as the busman whose first novel was shortlisted for the 1998 Booker Prize. The Restraint Of Beasts was a comedy of manipulation and death among fence-builders. The similarly menacing, hilarious All Quiet On The Orient Express followed. Mills moved on to enigmatic allegories, like Explorers Of The New Century, but the concise prose, pared characterisation and Flann O’Brien-meets-Les Dawson humour remained.”

“His sixth novel, The Maintenance Of Headway, published this month, is a lighter, comedic parade of bus drivers trying to save minutes and inspectors slowing them down to “maintain headway”– keep buses equally spaced. It is a chance for Mills to set the record straight: hectic roads and inspectors delay buses, not drivers.”

The rest of this story can be read here.

I’d not heard of Mills but reading the reviews of his books on Amazon makes me curious enough to want to read several of them.