Choke

Victor Mancini has devised a complicated scam to pay for his mother's hospital care: pretend to be choking on a piece of food in a restaurant and the person who 'saves you' will feel responsible for you for the rest of their lives. Multiply that a couple of hundred times and you generate a healthy flow of cheques, week in, week out. Victor also works at a theme park with a motley group of losers, cruises sex addiction groups for action, and visits his mother, whose Alzheimer's disease now hides what may be the startling truth about his parentage.

Chuck Palahniukis the bestselling author of fifteen fictional works, includingFight Club,Invisible Monsters,Survivor,Choke,Lullaby,Diary,Haunted,Rant,Pygmy,Tell-All,Damned,Doomed,Beautiful You, and most recentlyMake Something Up. He lives in the Pacific Northwest.

'Choke is Fight Club for sex addicts' Independent on Sunday