A glorious collision of the mundane and the supernatural, Monique Roffey's wonderful debut Sun Dog is a magical realist tale that hails not from South America or the subcontinent but one of West London's grubbier neighbourhoods.

The book is set mainly in and around a Shepherd's Bush delicatessen. While Roffey vividly conjures this "gastronomic locker room" she positively lavishes her imagination on August Chalmin, her extraordinary protagonist. August is an awkward pale-skinned gentle giant who has "the eyes of a veal calf" and "blood-orange hair which limbo dances crazily from his head". His pigmentation matches the hues of the Mimolette cheese that lurks beside the Boscaillo olives, Venetian polenta, Milanese panettone and Caspian caviar on the deli's teeming counter. Although he understands food, much of life is a mystery to him. He's captivated by matronly co-worker Henry and infatuated with Leola, the local florist, but love, at least so far, has largely proved elusive. Raised by his mother, Olivia, in a Yorkshire hippie commune, he never knew his father. When Cosmo, one of Olivia's former lovers, suddenly materialises after more than 20 years he starts to wonder about his parentage.

As doubts grow, his appearance, odd enough to begin with, starts to change. His body becomes coated in frost. By spring, just as he is beginning to unearth more about his origins, buds sprout from his skin. His physiognomy appears to be echoing the seasons. Could he be allergic to the deli's food? Or, do these transformations offer a clue to the identity of his real father? More Hans Christian Anderson than Franz Kafka, Roffey's novel, replete with a few exquisite tributaries, is an ingenious fable about the nature of love, truth and perception.--Travis Elborough