Shame is an acquired taste. No one knows this better than the young anonymous narrator subjected to repeated instances of sexual abuse, parental beatings and gleefully administered psychological cruelty. After some formative missteps in Zambia and France he arrives in London where he finds the perfect enabler for his shame habit. A career in advertising. Brilliant, depraved and unexpectedly sophisticated The Shame Addict shocks and seduces as we witness the manufacture and installation of one of the most prominent self-destruct buttons ever featured in modern fiction.