Caledonian Road
The Sunday Times bestseller
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- 18,99 €
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- 18,99 €
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'Extraordinary.' Marina Hyde
'An utter joy to read.' Monica Ali
'Majestic.' Independent
'A masterpiece.' John Lanchester
'Addictively enjoyable.' Guardian
'Sensational.' Irish Independent
'Pitch-perfect.' Observer
From the author of Mayflies, an irresistible, unputdownable, state-of-the-nation novel - the story of one man's epic fall from grace.
Campbell Flynn - art historian and celebrity pundit - is entering the empire of middle age. Fuelled by an appetite for controversy and novelty, he doesn't take people half as seriously as they take themselves. Which will prove the first of his huge mistakes.
The second? Milo Mangasha, his beguiling and provocative student. Milo inhabits a more precarious world. He has experiences and ideas that excite his teacher. He also has a plan.
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. But then, he always knew: when his life came tumbling down, it would occur in public.
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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.
