The Wall: A Novel - Hardcover

Lanchester, John

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1324001631 ISBN 13: 9781324001638

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 2019

Synopsis

An NPR "Favorite Books of the Year" and Financial Times "Best Fiction of the Year" selection.

The best-selling author of The Debt to Pleasure and Capital returns with a chilling fable for our time.

Ravaged by the Change, an island nation in a time very like our own has built the Wall―an enormous concrete barrier around its entire coastline. Joseph Kavanagh, a new Defender, has one task: to protect his section of the Wall from the Others, the desperate souls who are trapped amid the rising seas outside and are a constant threat. Failure will result in death or a fate perhaps worse: being put to sea and made an Other himself. Beset by cold, loneliness, and fear, Kavanagh tries to fulfill his duties to his demanding Captain and Sergeant, even as he grows closer to his fellow Defenders. A dark part of him wonders whether it would be interesting if something did happen, if they came, if he had to fight for his life...

John Lanchester―acclaimed as "an elegant and wonderfully witty writer" (New York Times) and "a writer of rare intelligence" (Los Angeles Times)―has written a taut, hypnotic novel of a broken world and what might be found when all is lost. The Wall blends the most compelling issues of our time―rising waters, rising fear, rising political division―into a suspenseful story of love, trust, and survival.

About this title

About the Author

John Lanchester is the author of five novels, including The Wall, the best-selling Debt to Pleasure and Capital, as well as several works of nonfiction, including I.O.U. and How to Speak Money. His books, which have been translated into twenty-five languages, have won the Whitbread First Novel Prize, the Hawthornden Prize, and the E. M. Forster Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He is a contributing editor to the London Review of Books and a regular contributor to The New Yorker. He lives in London.

Review

“Gripping...Full of tense action and sudden reversals...Few readers will stop until they reach its final page.”
- Alec Nevala-Lee, New York Times Book Review

“Thrilling...A topical and deftly satirical novel.”
- Anna Mundow, Wall Street Journal

“[A] taut tale...It’s not clear what it will take to finally convince us that it’s time to panic about climate change, but works of fiction such as The Wall have an important role to play.”
- Stephen Dyson, Washington Post

“As in all good dystopian fiction, Lanchester shows us a world that could become a reality...[He] maintains measured, elegant prose–creating an assuredly human dystopian novel.”
- Lucas Wittmann, TIME

“Bold and confident fiction that highlights the current American and British issues of Trumpism and Brexit. ”
- Los Angeles Times

“A chilling reminder of the ease with which myopia can turn to dystopia.”
- Michael Magras, Houston Chronicle

“Chillingly real.”
- Boris Kachka, New York magazine

“An utterly persuasive story set in a dystopic future. Unputdownable. It's 1984 for our times.”
- Michael Lewis

“In The Wall, John Lanchester takes our current political climate to its terrible and logical extreme. A harrowing, brilliant, and troublingly plausible vision of the future.”
- Emily St. John Mandel

“The Wall is something new: almost an allegory, almost a dystopian-future warning, partly an elegant study of the nature of storytelling itself. I was hugely impressed by it.”
- Philip Pullman

About this edition

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 2019
• ISBN 10: 1324001631
• ISBN 13: 9781324001638
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 288