En cours de chargement...
Kavanagh begins his life patrolling the Wall. If he's lucky, if 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. He will soon find out what Defenders do and who the Others are. Along with the rest of his squad, he will endure cold and fear day after day, night after night.
But somewhere, in the dark cave of his mind, he thinks : wouldn't it be interesting if something did happen, if they came, if you had to fight for your life ? John Lanchester's thrilling, hypnotic new novel is about why the young are right to hate the old. It's about a broken world you will recognise as your own - and about what might be found when all is lost.
The Wall -- John Lanchester
John Lanchester's 'The Wall' is a fascinating novel which can be appreciated from a variety of angles. His dystopian vision of Great Britain's coastline surrounded by a wall and remparts to 'protect' the country from the 'Others' -- foreign refugees-- evokes the paranoia and xenophobia of Trump's America, one among many examples of contemporary isolationism. Lanchester manages to make his allegorical tale more universal by deftly demonstrating how the ordinary Everyman Kavanaugh initially finds a deep sense of purpose through the camaraderie and success in overcoming hardship and discomfort he experiences during the initial period of his two year mandatory recruitment as a wall Defender. 'The Wall' is a worthwhile cautionary tale set in a world not very different from our own where notions such as 'the truth' or even the 'predictable' quality of meteorology are called into question when our 'leaders' and earth's rising sea levels pose an incontrovertible threat to our existence. A welcome antidote to simplistic thinking : an indispensable read.