Recommendations from our site
“It’s a near-future dystopia where the seas have risen, and there is now a very high wall that’s been built around what remains of the UK. Everyone in their 20s has to do a couple of years of national service on the wall, doing guard duty. They’re trying to keep out what they call ‘the others’, which means immigrants. They do endless drills, and sometimes the real thing happens, and people arrive with boats and machine guns trying to get into the country, and they have to fight back. They’re sent out on a ship if they fail. The book follows a very ordinary narrator, a young man, as he comes to the wall for the first time. It’s a really simple concept, but the way it’s told is absolutely incredible. I think there are very few people who would manage to wring poetry out of a big concrete wall, but John Lanchester definitely does. I absolutely inhaled that book.” Read more...
The Best Sci-Fi Romance Novels
Natasha Pulley, Novelist
