Description

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Shortlisted for the 2020 Orwell Prize



"Thrilling…A topical and deftly satirical novel." —Anna Mundow, Wall Street Journal

In this taut, dystopian tale, an island nation ravaged by the Change has built an enormous concrete barrier around its coastline—the Wall. Joseph Kavanagh, a new Defender, has one task: to protect his section of the Wall from the Others, the desperate souls trapped amid the rising seas outside. A blend of the most compelling issues of our time—climate change, increasing fear, widening divisions—The Wall is a suspenseful story of love, trust, and survival.

About the Author

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John Lanchester  is the author of five novels, including The Debt to Pleasure and Capital. His books have been translated into more than twenty-five languages, and he is a regular contributor to The New Yorker and the New York Review of Books. He lives in London.

Praise For…

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Unputdownable. It’s 1984 for our times.

— Michael Lewis

A harrowing, brilliant, and troublingly plausible vision of the future.
— Emily St. John Mandel, author of Station Eleven

Gripping.… Few readers will stop until they reach its final page.
— Alec Nevala-Lee - New York Times Book Review

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

A novel that ranks alongside Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake and the oeuvre of Kim Stanley Robinson as a fictional meditation on what climate change may mean for the planet.

— Tom Holland - Guardian

A powerful thought experiment.
— Giles Harvey - New York Review of Books

An unsettling, compulsive and brilliant portrait of powerlessness.
— John Day - Financial Times

Bold and confident fiction that highlights the current American and British issues of Trumpism and Brexit. It also examines the increasingly wide social and political divide of the young and the old.
— Ant Jones - Los Angeles Times

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

Highly relevant.
— Ron Charles - Washington Post