The Wall by John Lanchester

“From the wall, to the sea, a cold dystopian adventure”

Overview: Framed against the aftermath of a catastrophic climate disaster known as ‘the Change’, Lanchester paints a deeply compelling picture of a divided nation, committed to defending its walls at all costs. The dark heir of his state-of-the-nation novel Capital, The Wallis a Middle England dystopia for our fractured and uncertain times. A thrillingly apposite allegory of Broken Britain that asks key questions about the choice between personal freedom and national interest.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Although I have vehemently claimed I don’t like first-person books, many dystopian novels are written in first-person so I read them and end up loving them. This was a really interesting story, especially since “The Change” against which the entire world is changed, is never really explained, allowing the reader to come to their own conclusions.

What makes this story so disturbing isn’t just the world the author created, but even more so, the emotions of the main characters. They are mostly helpless pawns navigating a world that their parents’ generation created and controlled.