Author:Claude McKay
While stowed away on a transatlantic freighter, Lafala is discovered and locked away in an icy-cold closet, resulting in the loss of his frostbitten legs. When his successful lawsuit against the shipping company brings big bucks, Lafala returns to Marseille to resume his affair with Aslima, a Moroccan prostitute. With its scenes of black bodies seeking pleasure and fighting for freedom even when stolen, shipped, and sold for parts, Romance in Marseille explores the heritage of slavery amid a predatory modern economy.
Claude McKay's poetry was one of the great forces in bringing about what is often called the 'Negro Literary Renaissance'
—— James Weldon JohnsonI loved Claude McKay's Romance in Marseille, so witty and so precise, a little instrument for imagining another kind of modernist history
—— Adam Thirlwell , The White ReviewLoved it. A ferocious revenge story which also manages to be sweetly uplifting. A book Donald Trump would call f*cking nasty.
—— Robert Webb[The F*ck-it List] took me by surprise – a thriller with humanity as well as tension.
—— Ian RankinOf course, of course, John Niven does it again. It is impossible to read him without laughing out loud one second, and feeling guiltily exhilarated the next. His perfectly observed writing has taken us to many dark places over the years, but this may be the darkest yet: an America of the very-near future, whose stifling horrors he conjours all-too-believably. Niven is a writer of wicked humour and outrageous charm – but he is a profoundly moral writer, too. And while this is a brilliantly observed revenge story, it’s also a terrifyingly unsettling satire of a world just around the corner. Its warnings will stay with me as long as its wit.
—— Marina HydeHilarious and horrifying in equal measure ... [A] compulsive revenge thriller ... Niven vividly portrays the terror of a world where children are encouraged to take guns to school and protesters get so badly beaten it’s a wonder they bother. Mind-blowingly brilliant.
—— Daily MailThis road trip through America of 2026, with Ivanka Trump now president, niftily combines a case study of one life wrecked by her father (who reverses legal abortion) with a satirical speculative survey of his legacy, for minimal gun control to a cowed media, migrant detention gulags to wars with Iran and North Korea. And, as fans of Niven’s music-biz novel Kill Your Friends will expect, his anger-powered prose is not short of bite and verve.
—— The Sunday TimesFull of angry energy.
—— The Times[T]he book is masterfully controlled and highly entertaining, with surprising elements of serious reflection on ageing, regret, and mortality. Think Elmore Leonard, only politicised
—— Evening StandardThe most excoriating, shocking thing I have ready about Trump’s America
—— Damian Barr , The ObserverJohn Niven’s latest acerbic novel offers a short, sharp dose of misery and hopelessness – a glimpse into a near-future America that will shock to the core […] It is a shocking book on so many levels, but most of all because it is scarily easy to imagine some of it playing out in reality.
—— Irish ExaminerI absolutely loved this book. I read it in two sittings, it would have been one but I started late at night and I couldn't keep my eyes open! […] I'm giving this book 5 out of 5 stars. The writing is just brilliant and makes me want to read everything else John Niven has written.
—— Blog LovinNobody does cutting satire quite like John Niven. For years he has been the spiky in-your-face voice of Britain's Generation-X
—— SunJust the right side of absurd, it's a compelling and bloody page-turner
—— TatlerJohn Niven's The F*ck it List has a similar setup to the film Falling Down, but with a dodgy president running a dodgier US at its core. It's sharp, funny and unlikely to see its author invited to many Republican golf tourneys.
—— Ian Rankin , GuardianAn utterly addictive revenge novel.
—— Daily MailAn utterly addictive revenge novel [...] The heartbreak and hilarity ratchet up simultaneously
—— Irish Daily Mail[Niven] writes with all the savage, righteous energy needed to carry us along with it.
terrific - funny, honest and deliciously rude
—— Alice O'Keefe , The BooksellerThis is going to be a bestseller…A sharp, hilarious and controversial read
—— The BooksellerI laughed aloud at this funny, outrageous story of a girl from Wolverhampton council estate who reinvents herself as Dolly Wilde
—— Woman & Homeas irreverent, amusing and vibrant as Moran herself
—— GQrowdy and fearless ... sloppy, big-hearted and alive in all the right ways
—— New York TimesMs. Moran['s] ... funny and cheerfully dirty coming-of-age novel has a hard kernel of class awareness ... sloppy, big-hearted and alive in all the right ways.
—— Dwight Garner , New York TimesThis is going to be a bestseller…A sharp, hilarious and controversial read
—— The BooksellerA must for Handmaid's Tale aficionados
—— BooklistPowerful, Ishiguro-esque... Sophie Mackintosh lays bare many of the fears and realities that face any society's women as they contemplate when their choices begin, and where they might end
—— Boston GlobeTold with ragged prose that catches the breath, [Blue Ticket] articulates the irrepressible desires and wounds that can lie deep within, marked by a claustrophobia that never stops pressing in from the margins. This unsettling reimagining of the anxieties and pressures around motherhood lays bare the alienation that comes when your body is not truly yours
—— Irish NewsA darkly brilliant allegory... Astute, revelatory and heartbreaking
—— Heather O’Neill, author of 'The Lonely Hearts Hotel'A rich, sharp, and daring book. To read Blue Ticket is to feel so vigorously alert you can feel the world turning
—— Heidi Sopinka, author of 'The Dictionary of Animal Languages'Mesmerising
—— Daily NerdMackintosh poses urgent questions about social expectations and free will that are relevant to all realities
—— Poets and WritersThis debut novel by acclaimed short story writer van den Berg tends to lean much closer to the realms of literary fiction with its complex psychology. . . Van den Berg's writing is curiously beautiful
—— Kirkusa strange beauty in this apocalyptic tale
—— Psychologies