Books by John Lanchester
“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
“It’s not just a dictionary. It’s a book you can read through and enjoy.” Read more...
Best Investing Books for Beginners
John Kay, Economist
Whoops! Why Everyone Owes Everyone and No One Can Pay
by John Lanchester
It’s extremely readable and a lot of it is about how we are incredibly bad at assessing risk and probability. You cannot eradicate risk, risk is what life is. Lanchester demonstrates that out there in the real world we go on and on making the same mistakes because we don’t understand ourselves.
Interviews with John Lanchester
The best books on Understanding High Finance, recommended by John Lanchester
Understanding finance is key to understanding how the world works, but many people know very little about it. Journalist John Lanchester picks five accessible books to bring the layperson up to speed.
Interviews where books by John Lanchester were recommended
The best books on Lying, recommended by Dorothy Rowe
All our behaviour is determined not by what happens to us, but how we interpret what happens to us, says the psychologist and bestselling author. And we don’t always tell ourselves the truth. Dorothy Rowe chooses the best books on lying.
Best Investing Books for Beginners, recommended by John Kay
Investing can seem scary if you’ve never done it before but it is, in fact, fairly straightforward. Economist John Kay recommends some investing books for beginners.
The Best Sci-Fi Romance Novels, recommended by Natasha Pulley
Sci fi opens up new possibilities for romance stories, unconstrained by social reality. It’s an exciting time for the genre, says Natasha Pulley, bestselling author of The Mars House. Through her five contemporary favourites, she explores how human emotion – including romantic love and friendship – elevates the best sci-fi novels, creating stories with realism and depth.
