Patrick Bateman is twenty-six and works on Wall Street; he is handsome, sophisticated, charming and intelligent. He is also a psychopath. American Psycho is a bleak, bitter, black comedy about a world we all recognize but do not wish to face and it takes us on a head-on collision with America's greatest dream and its worst nightmare. 'A serious, clever and shatteringly effective piece of writing ...For its savagely coherent picture of a society lethally addicted to blandness, it should be judged by the highest standards' John Walsh, Sunday Times 'That the book's contents are shocking is downright undeniable, but just as Bonfire of the Vanities exposed the corruption and greed engendered in eighties politics and high living, American Psycho examines the mindless preoccupations of the nineties preppy generation' Maria Lexton, Time Out 'Ellis's book is, ultimately and valuably, a black-hearted satire on the terrible power of money' Jenny Turner, Scotsman