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WINNER OF THE McKITTERICK PRIZE 2022

‘Madcap, hugely rich and entertaining’ GQ

‘Enjoyable, deft and humorous’ The Times

‘Entertaining, acute and remarkably prescient’ TLS

‘A book from the psychic fault-lines of 21st Century Britain . . . simultaneously down to earth and epic’ Johny Pitts, author of Afropean

Peterdown, an industrial town with a noble past and a lacklustre present, has been chosen as the regional hub of Britain’s first state-of-the-art bullet train network. High Speed+ promises the town a prosperous future but to make way for the new station, a local landmark will be have to be razed to the ground. On the shortlist are the Larkspur housing estate, a significant modernist masterpiece; and the Chapel, the beloved home of the town’s football team. Local sports reporter Colin is as desperate to save the Chapel as his architect partner Ellie is determined to save the Larkspur, and they soon find themselves leading increasingly passionate and opposing campaigns. Out of this spins an epic, wide-angle novel, rich with character and incident. Affairs are embarked upon. Conspiracies are uncovered. A broad-based popular insurgency ignites.

Peterdown is a riotous novel that brings England’s beleaguered streetscape to life and finds lurking there a playful and storied counterculture: mad monks and machine breakers, avant-gardists and non-conformists

Publisher Review

A book from the psychic fault lines of 21st Century Britain, Peterdown’s big ambitions never lose sight of the human and everyday. The result is something simultaneously down to earth and epic Madcap, hugely rich and entertaining * GQ * Few novels quite match David Annand’s debut . . . so enjoyable to read: the deft and humorous telling of people trying to muddle through modern life * The Times * Entertaining, acute and remarkably prescient * TLS * Peterdown is a state-of-the-nation work evincing a sweeping preoccupation with ideas of community, space and place . . . a timely book, clear in its concerns and vital in its focus. * Literary Review * A captivating parable about how we understand place. . . Annand’s narrative speaks volumes about how culture configures our relationship to physical space . . . Peterdown makes for engrossing reading * Hackney Citizen * David Annand is a great storyteller who has suddenly arrived in the front rank of contemporary novelists with a book that is witty, touching, loaded with drama and, most crucially, lays bare the cultural and class divisions that run through present-day British society. Along the way, from the Fall to the steak bake at Greggs to football culture, he understands the poetry of everyday life in all its infinite bittersweet detail Annand’s class politics are razor sharp; Peterdown is What a Carve Up! for the post-crash era of gentrification and Iconic developments, skewering many of the bromides of contemporary politics and culture along the way * Tribune *