The Cockroach
Ratings8
Average rating3.3
15
Ratings8
Average rating3.3
A brilliant, of-the-moment political satire like no other, from the Booker Prize winner and bestselling author of Atonement. Kafka meets the world of Brexit in this bitingly funny novel centered on a cockroach transformed into the prime minister of England. That morning, Jim Sams, clever but by no means profound, woke from uneasy dreams to find himself transformed into a giant 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. In this bitingly funny Kafkaesque satire, Ian McEwan engages with scabrous humor a very recognizable political world and turns it on its head. Don’t miss Ian McEwan’s new novel, Lessons, coming in September!
Reviews with the most likes.
I'm ashamed to admit I spent more time than I should have figuring just how Reversalism would work. (Conclusion: It wouldn't.) In the book Reversalism is an economic system supported by the Prime Minister (not quite himself of late) in which the economy would flow backwards. One paid one's employer for hours worked and then received compensation for shopping, the whole system rounded out by penalization for the accumulation of wealth. The origins for this literary device lie in the novella's other literary device, his homage to Kafka:
He was beginning to understand that by a grotesque reversal his vulnerable flesh now lay outside his skeleton...
The Children Act
