To Battersea Park

‘A brilliantly conceived and audacious novel from one of our most consistently intelligent and beguiling writers’ William Boyd, author of The Romantic

‘Surefooted and emotionally generous … A serious achievement … Less a book about the pandemic and more a book about the stories we tell ourselves about the pandemic; billions of stories, fragile, partial, and essential, each one a small but vital act of reclamation and remembrance’ Guardian

‘Interesting and innovative … A different kind of state-of-the-nation novel; an exercise in imagination and empathy born out of a moment of collective crisis’ Daily Telegraph

‘A revelation: a comedy of suburban manners slowed to the point of nightmare’ Spectator

‘Challenges everything we might have taught ourselves to expect from fiction… Wise, ingenious and passionate’ TLS

‘Bears [Hensher’s] hallmark brilliance … Magnificently succeeds in excavating the sedimentary layers of a neighbourhood in lockdown’ Financial Times

‘Eloquently distils the way in which enforced social distancing made us see the world around us through fresh eyes … an impressive addition to the canon of lockdown fiction’ Mail on Sunday

‘Playful, philosophical, sensual, violent and funny … But above all, it’s defiant: an account of confinement that refuses to be confined’ Literary Review

‘A master novelist and prose stylist … Shifts from sublimely evoked reality to terrifyingly, clearly imagined dystopia’ Country Life

‘Masterly in marrying observations of the minutiae of the lives of ‘ordinary’ people with huge, soaring themes’ AnOther Magazine

‘An imaginative tour de force. The first great lockdown novel, and perhaps the only one we’ll need’ Mick Herron, author of Bad Actors

‘Utterly engrossing’ Lissa Evans, author of V for Victory

Philip Hensher is a columnist for the Independent, arts critic for the Spectator and a Granta Best of Young British novelist. He has written six novels, including The Mulberry Empire and the Booker-shortlisted The Northern Clemency, and one collection of short stories. He lives in South London.