John Lanchester pens 'thrilling and hypnotic' next novel

Capital author John Lanchester has penned a "thrilling and hypnotic" new novel set for publication in January 2019.

The Wall is described as a mystery story, a love story, a war story and a story about a voyage. Faber acquired UK and Commonwealth rights to the book, plus EU, excluding Canada, from Caradoc King at United Agents.

It follows Kavanagh, who begins his life patrolling the Wall. The blurb reads: "If he’s lucky and nothing goes wrong, he only has two years of this: 729 more nights. The best thing that can happen is that he survives and gets off the Wall and never has to spend another day of his life anywhere near it. He longs for this to be over; longs to be somewhere else."

The Wall is a novel about why the young are right to distrust the old, about a broken world readers will recognise as their own and about what might be found when all is lost, Faber said.

Chief executive Stephen Page added: "There's no living writer like John Lanchester. Each novel arrives with its own world of ideas and concerns, woven into a compelling and accessible narrative. Readers will discover that The Wall is prophetic, affecting, and a compulsive read. We are so proud to be publishing it."

Lanchester is a contributing editor to the London Review of Books and a regular contributor to the New Yorker. He has written four novels, The Debt to Pleasure (Picador), Mr Phillips (Faber), Fragrant Harbour (Faber) and Capital (Faber), and three works of non-fiction: Family Romance (Faber), a memoir; and Whoops!: Why everyone owes everyone and no one can pay (Penguin), about the global financial crisis and How to Speak Money (Faber), a primer in popular economics.