Reality

A Kirkus Reviews Best Short Fiction of 2021 Selection

Ghost stories for the digital age by the Booker Prize–longlisted author of The Wall.

In 2017, inspired in part by Henry James' The Turn of the Screw, the acclaimed English novelist John Lanchester published a ghost story in The New Yorker. "Signal," an eerie story of contemporary life and the perils of technology, was a sensation among readers—and since then Lanchester has written several more.

Reality and Other Stories gathers the best of these, taking readers to an uncanny world familiar to fans of The Twilight Zone or Black Mirror. Household gizmos with a mind of their own. Mysterious cell-phone calls from unknown numbers. Reality TV shows and the creeping suspicion that none of this is real…

Reality and Other Stories is a book of disquiet that captures the severe disconnection and distraction of our time.