RaveHarvard ReviewThe cataclysms that have dominated our shared experiences over the past year—be they political, epidemiologic, or environmental—bring near-future fiction so much closer to daily experience. That should improve our reception of the bevy of literature that braids political, science, and climate futures together, the niche to which novelist and essayist John Lanchester’s The Wall belongs ... The narration and dialogue are smooth, from the lexicon of life on the Wall ... The Wall is a book squarely for our time: set a few minutes after a hypertrophied Brexit with an industrial dose of the nativism that is more familiar to American readers. The dystopian conceit is a zero say-do gap where policy is manifest in the most literal and stark proportions. It’s not a new trick, but in Lanchester’s hands, The Wall shows how calamity cannot cleave politics from environmentalism. They are fused as much for Kavanaugh as for anyone mired in a global pandemic that started as a viral spillover from other species. This novel is necessary reading for citizens of the new normal—because, as much as we may wish otherwise, we’re all in the same boat.
