About this item
The best-selling author of The Debt to Pleasure and Capital returns with a chilling fable for our time.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 border. 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 attack constantly. 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. And then the Others attack. . . .Acclaimed British novelist John Lanchester, "a writer of rare intelligence" (Los Angeles Times) , delivers a taut dystopian novel that blends the most compelling issues of our time -- rising waters, rising fear, rising political division -- into a suspenseful story of love, trust, and survival.
About the Author
John Lanchester is the author of the novels The Debt to Pleasure, Mr. Phillips, and Fragrant Harbor; and a memoir, Family Romance. He is a contributing editor at the London Review of Books and his work has appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Observer, and The Daily Telegraph, among others. Among several other prizes, including the Whitbread and Hawthornden Awards, Lanchester was awarded the 2008 E.M. Forster Award by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He lives in London.
