Morrissey describes harsh reviews of first novel as an 'attack against me as a human being'

List of the Lost was branded an 'unpolished turd' by one very unimpressed critic

Literary critics, Morrissey didn't write List of the Lost for you, alright? (Getty Images)

Morrissey is known for having one of the biggest egos in music, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the former Smiths frontman has taken criticism of his debut novel very personally.

List of the Lost was greeted with a deluge of damning reviews upon its release in September, with phrases used to describe it including “meandering ramble”, “utter garbage” and our favourite, “unpolished turd”.

The storyline follows a Seventies sports team in Boston who are cursed by a demon when one of them kills a man in the woods. Its sex scenes are being considered for a Bad Sex in Fiction award and even Morrissey’s fans struggled to give it good press.

Not one to go down without a good fight, Morrissey has dismissed all the criticism has an attack on him that has absolutely nothing to do with his writing.

“I strongly believe in freedom of expression and critics have to say what they have to say,” he told Chilean website Cooperativa.cl, before letting his real opinion loose.

“But often the criticisms are an attack against me as a human being and have nothing to do with what they’re reading,” he said. “Neither can you give the moral high ground against a book just because you don’t like it.

“It wasn’t written for you. You cannot try to work out what you think the author should have written instead of what he actually wrote.”

Morrissey wasn’t stopping there, adding that most critics are merely “desperate to put their stamp on it” and “start something that might bring them a bit of attention”.

He refused to respond to accusations that some parts of the book are misogynistic, simply replying: “Some questions don’t deserve an answer”.

Fortunately, Morrissey has no current plans to write a second novel.