The Cockroach

By (author) McEwan, Ian
Short description/annotation

Kafka meets The Thick Of It in a bitingly funny new political satire from Ian McEwan

That morning, Jim Sams, clever but by no means profound, woke from uneasy dreams to find himself transformed into a gigantic creature.

Jim Sams has undergone a metamorphosis.

Description

Kafka meets The Thick Of It in a bitingly funny new political satire from Ian McEwan

That morning, Jim Sams, clever but by no means profound, woke from uneasy dreams to find himself transformed into a gigantic creature.

Jim Sams has undergone a metamorphosis. In his previous life he was ignored or loathed, but in his new incarnation he is the most powerful man in Britain – and it is his mission to carry out the will of the people. Nothing must get in his way: not the opposition, nor the dissenters within his own party. Not even the rules of parliamentary democracy.

With trademark intelligence, insight and scabrous humour, Ian McEwan pays tribute to Franz Kafka’s most famous work to engage with a world turned on its head.

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A comic triumph… How do you make a show of people who are doing such a fabulous job of making a show of themselves? McEwan manages to do so with great style and comic panache.
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The Cockroach is a satirical novella for our times, sharply observed and often very funny… an entertaining read, confronting the reality of Britain today.
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The latest instalment in his [McEwan’s] imaginative scrambling of English social history and of reality… [McEwan] finds room, amid all the Hansard send-ups and diplomatic silliness, to allude to more troubling physical-philosophical quandaries, while positing an alternative history of economic thought that culminates in a wayward version of our present.
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Brexit has such a camp, knowing, performative quality that it is almost impossible to inflate it any further… McEwan manages to do so with great style and comic panache… very funny… McEwan’s comic parable at least provides some relief from a political farce that has long gone beyond a joke.
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A well-constructed novella by a master of the art.
Biographical note
Ian McEwan is the critically acclaimed author of seventeen novels and two short story collections. His first published work, a collection of short stories, First Love, Last Rites, won the Somerset Maugham Award. His novels include The Child in Time, which won the 1987 Whitbread Novel of the Year Award; The Cement Garden; Enduring Love; Amsterdam, which won the 1998 Booker Prize; Atonement; Saturday; On Chesil Beach; Solar; Sweet Tooth; The Children Act; Nutshell; and Machines Like Me, which was a number-one bestseller. Atonement, Enduring Love, The Children Act and On Chesil Beach have all been adapted for the big screen.
Promotional headline
Kafka meets The Thick Of It in a bitingly funny new political satire from Ian McEwan