The news that New Suit for King Diamond had been nominated by its publisher (Trevor Lockwood's Author Publishing Ltd) for the Booker Prize filled me with scepticism. Why, after all, would someone capable of writing a Booker winner need to go to a print-on-demand publisher to get his work into the public eye? That simply shows my own inconsistency - after all, didn't I go into self-publishing with a belief that my own work was failing, not because of its inherent flaws, but because of major publishers' reluctance to take up good manuscripts when they are offered? Peter Cowlam's book proves my first instincts correct. Of course, I don't know for certain that he collected any rejection slips before approaching a POD publisher, but I'm guessing that he couldn't afford to take a chance on ending up with a load of remainder copies.

I know nothing, to speak of, about the author. His publicity tells us that his previous self-published novel, Electric Letters Z - which I was surprised to find I had heard of - got a rave review from The Observer, but it doesn't tell us anything about the man. So on to his latest effort.

The originality of the main plot, coupled with the fine writing, makes this one of the more memorable novels I have read in the past few years. New Suit for King Diamond is set in a not-so-distant future where the federal state of Europa has finally succeeded in swallowing up national identities and cultures. Shrewdly, Mr Cowlam does not dwell on the little details that add up to this imaginative whole. The scandal leading to the enforced retirement of the British royal family, for example, is referred to in a brief aside. Yet it is in these little diversions that the richest humour is to be found.

The author makes a show of concentrating, instead, on the task in hand - whatever that may be - with the narrator repeatedly and self-consciously dragging our attention back to his basic theme. Central to this are the machinations of a group of civil servants, and we are led into the story through a maze of short introductory chapters which are just beginning to feel tedious when we emerge into the semi-enlightenment of the main narrative. Our guide through this, Anno (a piece of wordplay whose significance is kept for later), is the head of the government "monitoring" agency located within the fantastic Mediterranean property known as Ix, originally conceived as the New Bayreuth. The thorn in Anno's side is his colleague, known as "Six", whose paranoid belief in a new wave of international terrorism leads to an investigation of mysterious media figure Craig Diamond, resulting in a trip to New Zealand where the narrator continues to spend the bulk of his time musing on his subject's life history.

Not only does Peter Cowlam use the English language beautifully, he invariably uses it correctly, a practice which is becoming increasingly unusual even amidst the output of major publishers. The result of this is, of course, to make the book stand out from its peers, but inevitably it also reduces the breadth of its appeal. The intensity of the narrative is such that the reader cannot get away with skipping a few words, for fear of missing some important point. This is not bedtime reading.

After a while, the author saves us the trouble of re-reading paragraphs by repeating them, producing an odd, but doubtless intended, sensation of déjà vu. The purpose of this is perhaps to keep hold of those readers who have already lost the thread. Whether the device works is questionable. As for the content, there are times when it all borders on philosophy. If I understand correctly, Mr Cowlam's concern - or at least that of his characters - is the nature, and future, of culture.