Gabriel wakes up in rehab and decides to die. But before this, he must find one last drink, a bacchanal of unprecedented debauchery and nimbus. After all, he says, ‘happiness not derived from intoxicants is false’. And so philosophy and ennui drive this odyssey from London to Tokyo to Nelson Smuts: the swaggering stalwart of inebriants. Alas the night is overshadowed by lethal fugu ovaries landing Smuts in the slammer and whooshes Gabriel to Berlin. He’s determined to save his friend, prove his mortality and close the show with a bang.

We end up in Wonderland. Pierre’s linguistic dexterity spins his characters along tightropes of ecstasy and woe until we realise that this is a master storyteller playing with us at whim. There are footnotes and recipes littered throughout the prose that are best consumed with a second reading. The hilarity and pace of each page is too addictive for frills and there is already a banquet that highlights the banalities of life. It sparkles with the clarity of cocaine and daylight and, I suspect, a virginal hum that’s quite intoxicating.