John Lanchester

'A great read. A box of delights which is also a thrilling satirical torture chamber.' Jesse Armstrong, creator of Succession 'An absolute riot . . . totally compulsive.' Observer 'A modern master of funny, penetrating satire.' GQ 'If Phoebe Waller-Bridge had a score to settle.' Stylist 'Twisty, clever and gleefully nasty.' The Times The new novel from the bestselling author of Capital What if the year's most talked about TV show was all about your marriage? Kate, thirty years into her marriage, has a seemingly idyllic metropolitan, North London life. Phoebe, a young screenwriter, is the creator of the year's hit TV show, Cheating. When Kate's world takes a darker turn, she thinks she sees details and intimacies in the show that only she and her husband Jack could possibly have known. But who has betrayed who? Who gets to tell whose story? A black comedy of resentment and entitlement, Look What You Made Me Do is the story of two very different women from two very different generations, heading toward a battle only one of them can win.

"Every successful marriage has its own private language." So it is for baby-boomer Kate and her architect husband, Jack, decades into their comfortable metropolitan life together, and for millennial television writer Phoebe and her charming loafer of a partner, Tony. But everything changes when a steamy Netflix show called Cheating becomes the much-talked-about megahit of the moment--and somehow seems to include intimate details of their marriage that only Kate and Jack could ever have known. Who has cheated whom? Who has stolen whose story--and why? A black comedy of love, trust, entitlement, and revenge, Look What You Made Me Do is a suspenseful story of two very different women and two very different generations, and a battle only one of them can win.

What if the year's most talked about TV show was all about your marriage? Kate, thirty years into her marriage, has a seemingly idyllic metropolitan, North London life. Phoebe, a young screenwriter, is the creator of the year's hit TV show, Cheating. When Kate's world takes a darker turn, she thinks she sees details and intimacies in the show that only she and her husband Jack could possibly have known. But who has betrayed who? Who gets to tell whose story? A black comedy of resentment and entitlement, Look What You Made Me Do is the story of two very different women from two very different generations, heading toward a battle only one of them can win.

In 2017, inspired in part by Henry James' The Turn of the Screw, the acclaimed English novelist John Lanchester published a ghost story in The New Yorker. "Signal," an eerie story of contemporary life and the perils of technology, was a sensation among readers--and since then Lanchester has written several more. Reality and Other Stories gathers the best of these, taking readers to an uncanny world familiar to fans of The Twilight Zone or Black Mirror. Household gizmos with a mind of their own. Mysterious cell-phone calls from unknown numbers. Reality TV shows and the creeping suspicion that none of this is real... Reality and Other Stories is a book of disquiet that captures the severe disconnection and distraction of our time.

'Sharp, humorous, satirical . . . a mind-bending collection.' TLSHousehold gizmos with a mind of their own. Constant cold calls from unknown numbers. And the creeping suspicion that none of this is real. Reality, and Other Stories is a gathering of deliciously chilling entertainments - stories to be read as the evenings draw in and the days are haunted by all the ghastly schlock, uncanny technologies and absurd horrors of modern life.

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.

* A Financial Times and Evening Standard Book of the Year ** LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2019 ** SHORTLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE FOR POLITICAL FICTION 2020 *'Masterly . . . A signal achievement . . . Remarkable.' Guardian'A 1984 for our times.' Daily ExpressKavanagh begins his time patrolling the Wall. If he's lucky, if nothing goes wrong, he only has to do two years of this. 729 more nights. The best thing that can happen is that he survives and gets off the Wall and will never have to spend another day of his life anywhere near it. But what if something did happen - if the Others came, if he had to fight for his life? Thrilling and heartbreaking, The Wall is about a troubled world you will recognise as your own - and about what might be found when all is lost.

Ravaged by the Change, an island nation in a time very like our own has built the Wall--an enormous concrete barrier around its entire coastline. Joseph Kavanagh, a new Defender, has one task: to protect his section of the Wall from the Others, the desperate souls who are trapped amid the rising seas outside and are a constant threat. Failure will result in death or a fate perhaps worse: being put to sea and made an Other himself. Beset by cold, loneliness, and fear, Kavanagh tries to fulfill his duties to his demanding Captain and Sergeant, even as he grows closer to his fellow Defenders. A dark part of him wonders whether it would be interesting if something did happen, if they came, if he had to fight for his life... John Lanchester--acclaimed as "an elegant and wonderfully witty writer" (New York Times) and "a writer of rare intelligence" (Los Angeles Times)--has written a taut, hypnotic novel of a broken world and what might be found when all is lost. The Wall blends the most compelling issues of our time--rising waters, rising fear, rising political division--into a suspenseful story of love, trust, and survival.

From the bestselling author of Whoops! and The Debt to Pleasure comes a post-financial crisis, state-of-the-nation novel told with compassion, humour and unflinching truth. Featuring a contemporary cast of characters that crosses race, class and religion, Capital is the moving and hugely topical story of one street caught on the brink of the crash. Capital: the City of London. Capital: money, currency, finance. Both are central to the multicultural micro-society living and working on Pepys Road-an ordinary street in the Capital. Formerly working class, the simple houses have seen a wave of gentrification and expensive renovations that have rendered them highly desirable, valuable real estate. Here lives Roger Yount, powerful investment banker daily trading risk against profit on the Foreign Exchange. An annual bonus of a million might seem excessive, but with second homes and nannies to maintain, he's not sure he can get by without it. Elsewhere on Pepys Road is the Muslim Pakistani family living above their convenience store, and a senior widow who entertains visits from her graffiti artist grandson. Recently arrived is Freddy Kano, teenage football celebrity, recruited from Senegal to join the Premier League, who left a two-room shack to follow his dream. Their stories intertwine with the immigrant workers who service the wealthy residents of the City: Zbigniew, the builder from Warsaw, catering to the super-rich in their interior decoration whims; the nanny who looks after Roger's two small boys while his well-groomed wife indulges her shopaholic tendencies; and traffic warden Quentina, who has exchanged the violence of the police in Zimbabwe for the violence of the enraged upper middle classes. For them all, this city offers the chance of a different kind of life. Each house has its own story and its own secrets, having seen its fair share of first steps and last breaths, and plenty of laughter in between. Today, through each letterbox along this ordinary street drops a card with a simple message: We Want What You Have. Readers who enjoy Dickens and Trollope and such contemporary books as Sebastian Faulks' A Week in December, will not want to miss out on this fast-paced, cosmopolitan social saga.

To those who don't speak it, the language of money can seem impenetrable. Fortunately, John Lanchester--the best-selling novelist and reporter hailed by The Economist for "explain ing] complex stuff in a down-to-earth and witty style"--is here to bridge the gap between the money people and the rest of us. With wit and candor, Lanchester explains more than 300 common words and phrases from "AAA rating" and "amortization" to "yield curve" and "zombie bank."

sets out to decode the world of finance for all of us, explaining everything from high-frequency trading and the World Bank to the difference between bullshit and nonsense. As funny as it is devastating, How To Speak Money is a primer and a polemic.

With an introduction by John BanvilleWinner of the Whitbread First Novel Award 1996. To like something is to want to ingest it and, in that sense, is to submit to the world; to like something is to succumb, in a small but contentful way, to death. Tarquin Winot - hedonist, food obsessive, ironist and snob - travels a circuitous route from the Hotel Splendide in Portsmouth to his cottage in Provence. Along the way he tells the story of his childhood and beyond through a series of delectable menus, organized by season. But this is no ordinary cookbook, and as we are drawn into Tarquin's world, a far more sinister mission slowly reveals itself . . . Winner of the 1996 Whitbread First Novel Award, John Lanchester's The Debt to Pleasure is a wickedly funny ode to food; an erotic and sensual culinary journey. Its elegant, intelligent and unhinged narrator is nothing less than a work of art himself.

Each house on Pepys Road, an ordinary street in London, has seen its fair share of first steps and last breaths, and plenty of laughter in between. But each of the street's residents--a rich banker and his shopaholic wife, a soccer prodigy from Senegal, Pakistani shop owners, a dying old woman and her graffiti-artist son--is receiving a menacing postcard with a simple message: "We Want What You Have." Who is behind this? What do they really want? In Capital, John Lanchester ("an elegant and wonderfully witty writer"--New York Times) delivers a warm and compassionate novel that captures the anxieties of our time--property values going up, fortunes going down, a potential terrorist around every corner--with an unforgettable cast of characters.

One warm July morning Mr Phillips climbs out of bed, leaving Mrs Phillips dozing. He prepares for his commute into the city - but this is no ordinary Wednesday. It is a day on which Mr Phillips will chat with a pornographer, stalk a tv mini-celebrity, have lunch with an aspiring record mogul, and get caught up in a bank robbery. It is, as Mr Phillips comes to realise, the first day of the rest of his life - whether he wants it to be or not. All this is both better and worse than being at work. So why is Mr Phillips, a cautious middle-aged accountant, not behind his desk calculating the financial consequences of redundancies or recommending the savings to be made from more responsible use of yellow sticky note pads?

THE TOP TEN BESTSELLER, NOW AN AWARD-WINNING NETFLIX HIT 'Effortlessly brilliant . . . hugely moving and outrageously funny.' Observer'A treat to read.' The Times'The great London novel of the twenty-first century.' New Statesman'Brimming with perception, humane empathy and relish . . . a capital achievement.' Sunday TimesThe award-winning adaptation of Capital is now available on Netflix: a moving, funny, and keenly insightful story of London on the brink of the financial crisis. The residents of Pepys Road, London - a banker and his shopaholic wife, an elderly woman dying of a brain tumour, the Pakistani family who run the local shop, the young football star from Senegal and his minder - all receive anonymous postcards with a simple message: We Want What You Have. Who is behind it? What do they want? As the mystery of the postcards deepens, the world around them is turned upside down by the financial crash. A state-of-the-nation novel told with compassion, humour and unflinching truth, Capital tracks a year in the life of the Pepys Road residents as their lives are changed beyond recognition. John Lanchester's book Capital was a Sunday TImes bestseller w/c 19-02-2012