John Niven is an exceptional writer. It took me more than 150 pages to realize this because his subject, the music business and its practices, is so revolting. Well, you might not immediately realize how ingenious the painter is who painted this pile of shit so brilliantly, so your first reaction could be to cover your mouth and run away - afraid that you might vomit.

Having halved the book, I gradually emerged from the stupor its utter cynicism, machismo and racism had dragged me into and start to laugh. It is so absurdly nasty, masochistic and real that to laugh it out is the only sane reaction.

Having halved the second half, I start to slow down and enjoy every bit of the story. To fully squeeze out its content, I began checking the dictionary at every unknown word.

I also checked the urban dictionary for all the slang like chang, boiler, gaff, ostros etc, even though - after hundreds of repetitions on the pages - I already understood what they meant.

With fifty pages left, I Googled all the celebrities mentioned, real and imagined; as well as Google map places and streets.

But still I have to face the fact that the book is over.

On top of well-written, it is also very, very catchy. If you didn’t read Victor Pelevin’s Scare Book of the Werewolf five years ago, I would have said that Niven’s Kill Your Friends is the best thing I have read in the past ten years.