Caledonian Road: A Novel

“In Caledonian Road by Andrew O’Hagan, everything is connected in a teeming, gripping, horrifying panorama of British society. In the tradition of Fielding, Dickens, and Orwell himself, the novelist gets everywhere: slipping into the Old Bailey, inviting himself to the polo, sharing a Mayfair magnum while taking notes. And, true to that tradition, Caledonian Road is absolutely contemporary: it gets to work in a world of branding and media spin, of hacking and cover-ups. It asks where the money is coming from, and who knows what, and how chasms of inequality are widening between people passing on the same London pavement” Read more...

The Best Political Novels of 2024: The Orwell Prize for Fiction

“Well, it feels like all of London is talking about Andrew O’Hagan’s Caledonian Road. It is, as the Guardian describes it, a ‘state of the nation burlesque’ in the Dickensian mould, that is, a social novel with an ensemble cast: ‘a bold, bullish tale of hubris and corruption, a book simultaneously dazzled and disgusted by the city it depicts.'” Read more...

Notable Novels of Summer 2024

Cal Flyn, Five Books Editor