Discovering Scarfolk

Scarfolk is a town in north-west England where the 1970s never ended, and the council would like a word. Everything here comes to you as an official document: a public information leaflet about what to do when your child is replaced, a library poster, a school textbook page, a warning about the reservoir.

Richard Littler grew the town out of a blog that went from nothing to a million page views, and the book collects and extends it with a thin narrative frame about a man and his two sons who arrive in Scarfolk and are not permitted to leave.

The joke is that the design is exactly right: the fonts, the muddy colour separation, the tone of a state that is certain it is helping. If you remember British public information films, this will find the nerve. For readers of Charlie Brooker and viewers of The League of Gentlemen and Brass Eye.