Universality
Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2025
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3.3 • 4 Ratings
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- £8.99
Publisher Description
LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2025
From the author of Assembly - A SPECTATOR, BBC AND DAZED BOOK OF THE YEAR
'An instant classic.' ELLE
'Utterly phenomenal.' ELIZABETH DAY
'Smart, twisty and original.' DAVID NICHOLLS
'A sharp, clever take on contemporary culture.'DAILY MAIL
'In a class of her own.'FINANCIAL TIMES
On an abandoned Yorkshire farm, a group of hippie-anarchists have taken up residence to build a new society. When their leader is brutally bludgeoned with a solid gold bar, an ambitious young journalist sets out to uncover the truth behind the attack. The longread exposé she writes goes viral - but is there more to the story than meets the eye?
Universality unravels the messy aftermath of that exposé through the perspective of each of the mystery's key players: a self-pitying banker, a columnist with secrets, a cult leader with dreams, and a fugitive with nothing left to lose.
The follow-up to Natasha Brown's Assembly is a twisty, slippery story of media, class, power and truth. Cutting through the noise, it reveals British society today for what it is.
'A searing, state-of-the-nation novel.' STYLIST
'Confirms Natasha Brown as a major talent.' OBSERVER
'A brilliant, unusual social x-ray of modern Britain.' ANDREW O'HAGAN
'It is impossible to not get utterly sucked in.' JENNY MUSTARD
'One of the most intelligent voices writing today.' GUARDIAN
'Original, vital, and unputdownable.' TESS GUNTY
'Brown is an astute political observer, easily dismembering cancel culture and our media circus.' NEW STATESMAN
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Brown's ambitious and stimulating sophomore novel (after Assembly) begins with an assault during an illegal rave on a West Yorkshire farm. The event, held in violation of Covid lockdown protocols, is recounted in a magazine article that makes up the novel's first section, which describes how the perpetrator, a lost young man named Jake, came to attack the victim, a radical activist named Pegasus, with a gold bar. The rest of the novel comprises a series of spryly shifting perspectives, as Brown traces the impact of the article on its principal figures, including its floundering writer, the divorced owner of the farm, an investment banker, and a maverick columnist who calls herself "an equal-opportunity hater." Indeed, Brown's narrative is less concerned with the crime than with astutely portraying the thorny, complex ways that class and race seep into news, information, and language itself—and how they can be utilized for personal gain. As in Susan Choi's Trust Exercise and Lisa Halliday's Asymmetry, part of the fun is in seeing where the story will jump to next, and the ways in which each new perspective changes the reader's understanding. The result is a dizzying and fascinating tale.
