You’ll either love this or hate this! No one can dispute the fact that Thomson’s prose is lyrical and truly mesmerizing but unless you can understand and are prepared to believe a United Kingdom that is split into four countries divided by walls and wire you may struggle with the plot. The story of one man (at the beginning, a boy) forms the main thread throughout as he travels through these divided countries and meets incredibly diverse cultures and thought-provoking ideas. I found it very compelling.
It is winter, somewhere in the United Kingdom, and an eight-year-old boy is removed from his home and family in the middle of the night. He learns that he is the victim of an extraordinary experiment. In an attempt to reform society, the government has divided the population into four groups, each representing a different personality type. The land, too, has been divided into quarters. Borders have been established, reinforced by concrete walls, armed guards and rolls of razor wire. Plunged headlong into this brave new world, the boy tries to make the best of things, unaware that ahead of him lies a truly explosive moment, a revelation that will challenge everything he believes in and will, in the end, put his very life in jeopardy ...
‘Sharply written ... One of his great strengths, in a genre that usually takes physical description as read, is an ability to evoke a landscape’ Guardian
‘The ideas behind Thomson’s novel buzz with originality, sparking contemporary connections and recalling Brave New World and even Gulliver’s Travels … Divided Kingdom thrums with ideas and is a moving and, at times, gripping book’ Observer
‘This book is brave in a Brave New World kind of way, and should earn Thomson tons of readers’ Esquire
Author
About Rupert Thomson
Rupert Thomson is the author of thirteen critically acclaimed novels, including The Insult, which was shortlisted for the Guardian Fiction Prize, and chosen by David Bowie as one of his 100 Must-Read Books of All Time, Death of a Murderer, which was shortlisted for the Costa Prize, and The Book of Revelation, which was made into a feature film by the Australian writer/director, Ana Kokkinos. His memoir, This Party’s Got to Stop, won the Writers’ Guild Non-Fiction Book of the Year in 2010. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and has contributed to the Financial Times, Guardian, London Review of Books, Granta, and Independent. He lives in London.
