Description

An explosive modern novel from the award-winning writer of The People’s Act of Love

Mr Burman is unmoored. Still reckoning with the death of his wife Ada, and struggling to understand his grown-up daughter Leila, he finds himself on a train to London, at the invitation of the police.

He is to meet Raf, a young man suspected of trying to blow up St Paul’s cathedral – and a man once intimately connected with the Burman family. Have the police laid a trap?

Compelling and compassionate, this novel follows Mr Burman’s journey towards the mystery of a radical act and into the true nature of his own family. It asks what a person leaves behind when they’ve gone, and how much of the past we can carry with us into the future.

Publisher Review

James Meek is one of our most consistently brilliant and thought-provoking writers. This is his best novel yet – a dark and unsettling meditation on marriage, fatherhood and architecture. Every page rings with deep truth — ALEX PRESTON James Meek is a master of the art of the stealthy narrative, and his keen intelligence and alertness are evident on every page of his new novel . . . Heart-breaking — RUPERT THOMSON Your Life Without Me follows a retired schoolteacher as he tries to discover whether it was his influence that landed a favourite former pupil in prison for a radical act of destruction . . . A novel that is a profound and unsettling take on modern life by a writer at the top of his game — KIRSTY LANG Praise for James Meek: ‘A glorious imaginative feat . . . Rarely have I been so captivated by a novel’ — SARAH WATERS on To Calais in Ordinary Time A story so original and so fully imagined — HILARY MANTEL on To Calais in Ordinary Time Be it essay or article, novel or short story, as a writer and time traveller James Meek does things differently and as readers we are all the better for that * * Sunday Times * * The language is so fresh and crisp and sparkling. And what a narrative! — PHILIP PULLMAN on The People’s Act of Love The best and most original book that I have read for years — LOUIS DE BERNIERES on The People’s Act of Love James Meek is Britain’s answer to Don DeLillo * * Independent * *