Author: James Meek

Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945)

Published on 12 February 2026 by Canongate Books in the United Kingdom.

Hardback | 256 pages
144 x 222 x 27 | 368g

An explosive modern novel from the award-winning writer of The People's Act of Love Mr Burman is unmoored. Still reckoning with the death of his wife Ada, and struggling to understand his grown-up daughter Leila, he finds himself on a train to London, at the invitation of the police. He is to meet Raf, a young man suspected of trying to blow up St Paul's cathedral - and a man once intimately connected with the Burman family. Have the police laid a trap? Compelling and compassionate, this novel follows Mr Burman's journey towards the mystery of a radical act and into the true nature of his own family. It asks what a person leaves behind when they've gone, and how much of the past we can carry with us into the future.