Kennedy Marr is a novelist from the old school. Irish, acerbic, and a borderline alcoholic and sex addict, his mantra is to drink hard, write hard, and try to screw every woman he meets. He's writing film scripts in LA, partying, drinking, and insulting his way through Californian society, but also suffering from writer's block and unpaid taxes. Then a solution presents itself: Marr is to be the unlikely recipient of the W. F. Bingham Prize for Outstanding Contribution to Modern Literature, an award worth half a million pounds. But it does not come without a price: he must spend a year teaching at the English university where his ex-wife and estranged daughter now reside. As Kennedy acclimatizes to the sleepy campus, inspiring revulsion and worship in equal measure, he's forced to reconsider his precarious lifestyle. Incredible as it may seem, there might actually be a father and a teacher lurking within him.