Penguin Books Australia

'If you remembered what new parenthood was actually like you wouldn't go around lying to people about how wonderful it is, and you certainly wouldn't ever do it twice.'

Michael Lewis thought he'd seen it all. He'd worked in the city. He knew how to deal with the worst excesses of human behaviour. He had cojones. Right?

Wrong. He was about to become a father . . .

'I know for a fact that my children are insane. Or, at any rate, I know that if an adult behaved as my children do, he would be institutionalized. Is it possible that they are contagious?'

Here Lewis reveals his own unique take on new-found paternity: from discovering your three-year-old loves to swear to the ethics of taking your offspring gambling at the races, from toilet training to the inevitable tantrums – of both parent and child – and the gradual realization that, despite everything, he's becoming hooked (although to something more expensive than a Class A drug habit).

'Small children are ungrateful; to do one a favour is, from a business point of view, about as shrewd as making a subprime mortgage loan.'

Home Game is probably the most brazenly honest and wickedly funny book about parenting ever written.

'Much effort, none of it mine, has gone into preparing for this moment . . . '