Caledonian Road
The Sunday Times bestseller
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4.1 • 54 Ratings
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
A BEST BOOK OF 2024 IN THE SUNDAY TIMES, THE SPECTATOR, TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT, INDEPENDENT, SCOTSMAN AND THE NEW YORKER
'Extraordinary.' MARINA HYDE
'Pitch-perfect.' OBSERVER
'An utter joy to read.' MONICA ALI
'Majestic.' INDEPENDENT
'A masterpiece.' JOHN LANCHESTER
'Addictively enjoyable.' GUARDIAN
'Sensational.'IRISH INDEPENDENT
A SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER
SHORTLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE FOR POLITICAL FICTION
He always knew: when his life came tumbling down, it would occur in public.
Campbell Flynn is fuelled by an appetite for wealth and admiration, controversy and novelty. An art historian and celebrity pundit, he has enjoyed a charmed career rubbing shoulders with oligarchs and aristocrats, fashion designers and fine artists, at ease with the highbrow and the mainstream.
Only now, the world is changing. Over the course of an incendiary year a web of secrets and crimes will be revealed, and Campbell Flynn may not be able to protect himself from the shattering exposure of all his privilege really involves.
Andrew O'Hagan's novel Caledonian Road was a Sunday Times bestseller w/c 31/03/2024
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Caledonian Road is a remarkably ambitious book, reaching into the lives of a motley line-up of Londoners as their very different paths cross, in order to build a nuanced portrait of modern Britain. Among those we follow are young radicals looking to beat the system, Establishment figures looking to evade accountability (and possibly taxes) as the world shifts around them, and nepo-oligarchs looking to make their mark. The novel is interested in the finer details of each person’s experience, but at its centre is one man's midlife crisis. Author and public intellectual Campbell Flynn cannot reconcile his ideals with the life he has chosen, and the people in it. As scandals erupt around him, Flynn finds himself seeking guidance from a student who offers moral clarity—barely concerned with whether their intentions towards him are benevolent or not. A sprawling exploration of the personal, the political, and the lies we tell ourselves at the point where the two meet.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
O'Hagan (Mayflies) centers this wide-ranging novel of ideas on an art critic and professor from a working-class Scottish background. In 2021 London, Campbell Flynn, 52, has achieved cultural prominence but continues to fall short of financial security. Unbeknownst to his aristocratic wife, he's stopped paying his taxes and owes money to an unsavory friend. To raise funds, he writes an anonymous self-help book, which he hopes will be a bestseller. Into this moment of unease steps university student Milo Mangasha, a handsome, blue-collar Black man who schools Flynn on structural racism and the Dark Net and convinces him to convert his book advance to Bitcoin. The story also dips into the perspectives of dozens of other characters, including a Russian oligarch, an illegally trafficked young Polish man, and a men's-rights activist. O'Hagan is at his best in the high society scenes; in one of them, he describes a duchess as resembling "an emaciated meerkat looking for an opportunity to enthuse." Unfortunately, the scenes involving Mangasha's young Black male friends are less convincing. Still, O'Hagan handles the many narrative strands with aplomb. Readers with a taste for the Dickensian will find much to admire.
Customer Reviews
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