2020 Orwell Prize for Political Fiction (nominee)
2019 Booker Prize (longlist)
Shortlisted for the 2020 Orwell Prize
"Thrilling…A topical and deftly satirical novel." —Anna Mundow, Wall Street Journal
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.
Genre: Science Fiction
"Thrilling…A topical and deftly satirical novel." —Anna Mundow, Wall Street Journal
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.
Genre: Science Fiction
Praise for this book
"A dystopian distillation of our troubled times, and an allegorical glimpse at a still-grimmer future, The Wall reminds us that even as politics corrupts and destroys and presses on undiminished, the soul erupts in surprising places to act as counterpoint and resistance. This patient, direct, suspenseful novel is one such eruption, and a civilizing comfort amid the simmering bloodlust." - Joshua Ferris
"John Lanchester writes with such clarity and effectiveness that his prose is a pleasure I always look forward to. His previous novels have all been memorable evocations of the world we're familiar with, but The Wall is something new: almost an allegory, almost a dystopian-future warning, partly an elegant study of the nature of storytelling itself. I was hugely impressed by it." - Philip Pullman
"With The Wall, John Lanchester follows his mind-boggling financial essays and his great realist novel Capital with a bold science fiction fable, a vivid, swift, chilling, and ultimately beautiful human story. All his work is of a piece-he wants his readers to see our moment better, and then do something about it." - Kim Stanley Robinson
"In The Wall, John Lanchester takes our current political climate to its terrible and logical extreme. A harrowing, brilliant, and troublingly plausible vision of the future." - Emily St John Mandel
"John Lanchester writes with such clarity and effectiveness that his prose is a pleasure I always look forward to. His previous novels have all been memorable evocations of the world we're familiar with, but The Wall is something new: almost an allegory, almost a dystopian-future warning, partly an elegant study of the nature of storytelling itself. I was hugely impressed by it." - Philip Pullman
"With The Wall, John Lanchester follows his mind-boggling financial essays and his great realist novel Capital with a bold science fiction fable, a vivid, swift, chilling, and ultimately beautiful human story. All his work is of a piece-he wants his readers to see our moment better, and then do something about it." - Kim Stanley Robinson
"In The Wall, John Lanchester takes our current political climate to its terrible and logical extreme. A harrowing, brilliant, and troublingly plausible vision of the future." - Emily St John Mandel
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