Philip Notman, an acclaimed medieval history professor whose fondness for Emerson’s scariest quote “ I  am glad to be on the brink of fear”, attends a conference in Bergen, Norway. On his return to London, and to his wife and son, something unexpected and inexplicable happens to him, and he is unable to settle back into his normal life. Seeking answers, he flies to Cadiz to see Inés, a Spanish academic, with whom he shared a connection at the conference, but his journey doesn’t end there. A chance encounter with a wealthy, elderly couple sends him to a house on the south coast of Crete. Uneasily settled into a sinister farmhouse as drenched in vengeful blood, he finds what he has been looking for. “If your cause is just” Notman states , “ you take up arms”. Is he thinking of leaving his wife happily married for 20-years, whom he claims he still loves, or is he trying to change a reality that has become impossible to hear? Is he on a quest for a simpler and more authentic existence, or is he utterly self-deluded.

Rupert Thomson author of 15 novels, uses cleverly short, punchy statements makes it easy to forget the absence of punctuation, offers a substantial clue as to where he’s heading. The reader is forced to surrender to a journey that feels both random and purposeful, and where imminent, pointless disaster feels increasingly inevitable.

Notman’s understanding wife Anya first learns about his altered state ( “It’s reality, he said/ I’m finding it unbearable” and perhaps too easily grants him the freedom to explore it.

Notman tires to make sense of both his personal circumstances and the world surrounding him, he finds himself embarking on a course of action that will push him to the very brink of disaster.

Thomson presents the outside world as conspirator, heightening his growing sense of evil against which he even more solitary ever more fixated – believe he has been chosen to fight. Holed up in a caravan, the amateur homemaker prepares to take his final steps. Is Mary a homeless girl whom Notman sets on the road to safety, a figment of his imagination? Does Jess a friend from the past, actually play a consoling visit to Notman’s long-suffering and bewildered wife? Or is this, too, a fantasy? How to make a Bomb is a lyrical study of a middle crisis, a satire of existentialism.

How to Make a Bomb by Rupert Thomson, Head of Zeus £20, 432 pages