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The Wall by John Lanchester (Omnibus)

A ravaged island nation has built the Wall. Joseph Kavanagh must defend it. Ben Norris reads John Lanchester’s dystopian novel.

Ravaged by the Change, an island nation has built the Wall, a high concrete barrier around its entire coastline.

Joseph Kavanagh, a new Defender, has one task: to protect his section of the Wall from the Others, the desperate souls who are trapped on the rising seas beyond the Wall and are trying to get in. Failure will result in death or a fate perhaps worse: being put to sea and made an Other himself.

Kavanagh begins his life patrolling the Wall.

If he’s lucky, if nothing goes wrong, he only has two years of this: 729 more nights.

John Lanchester’s dystopian novel.

Omnibus of five parts abridged by Eileen Horne.

Read by Ben Norris.

John Lanchester is a contributing editor to the London Review of Books and a regular contributor to the New Yorker.

He’s written four novels, The Debt to Pleasure, Mr Phillips, Fragrant Harbour and Capital, and three works of non-fiction: Family Romance, a memoir; and Whoops!: Why everyone owes everyone and no one can pay, about the global financial crisis and How to Speak Money, a primer in popular economics.

His books have won the Hawthornden Prize, the Whitbread First Novel Prize, the EM Forster Award and the Premi Llibreter, been longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and been translated into 25 languages.

Producer: Mair Bosworth

First broadcast on ±«Óãtv Radio 4 in March 2019.

1 hour, 15 minutes

Last on

Sun 21 May 2023 02:30

Broadcasts

  • Sun 31 Mar 2019 14:30
  • Mon 1 Apr 2019 02:30
  • Sun 21 Feb 2021 13:00
  • Mon 22 Feb 2021 01:00
  • Sat 20 May 2023 07:30
  • Sat 20 May 2023 12:30
  • Sat 20 May 2023 18:30
  • Sun 21 May 2023 02:30