In November 1960, Frank Sinatra gave Marilyn Monroe a dog. His name was Maf. He had an instinct for the twentieth century. For politics. For psychoanalysis. For literature. For interior decoration. This is his story. Maf the dog was with Marilyn for the last two years of her life. Not only a picaresque hero himself, he was also a scholar of the adventuring rogue in literature and art, witnessing the rise of America's new liberalism, civil rights, the space race, the New York critics, and was Marilyn Monroe's constant companion. The story of Maf the dog is a hilarious and highly original peek into the life of a complex canine hero - he was very much a real historical figure, with his license and photographs sold at auction along with Marilyn's other person affects. Through the eyes of Maf we're provided with an insight into the life of Monroe herself, and a fascinating take on one of the most extraordinary periods of the twentieth century.

 

Andrew O'Hagan was born in Glasgow. His novel Mayflies won the Christopher Isherwood Prize. He has been nominated for the Booker Prize, was voted one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists in 2003, and won the E.M. Forster Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He is Editor-at-Large of the London Review of Books and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Andrew also writes regularly for The New Yorker, Esquire, and the New York Review of Books. In 2024, he was made an Honorary Professor of Literature at the University of Glasgow. The BBC adaptation of Mayflies, produced by Synchronic Films, won a BAFTA for best scripted drama in 2023. Caledonian Road is to become a returning TV drama, produced by Sinestra Films, directed by Johan Renck (who directed Chernobyl for HBO), and the show runner is Will Smith who wrote Slow Horses.