Trump, Brexit, climate change: John Lanchester’s The Wall takes on every important issue facing the world right now
- British writer’s fifth novel a superb study of fear of ‘the Other’
- Story builds a wall around the UK but the genesis of the tale is in the Lanchester family’s deep Hong Kong roots
“It’s not like it was talked about a lot, but it was there – that Hong Kong was built by refugees. It was built by people who fled China. People were trying to get into Hong Kong constantly and would die swimming across the bay. They would come over the border into the New Territories and would get caught and sent back, or got to Boundary Street and were allowed to stay. The way I processed that as a child was, well, if people are trying to get to where you are, then you are in the safe place.
“It’s better to be in the safe place.”
I’m supposed to talk to John Lanchester about The Wall, the acclaimed British writer’s superb new novel. And in many ways that is exactly what we do, in a nondescript office at the premises of his London publisher. The 56-year-old, who sports what appears to be a moth-eaten jumper lovingly patched with bright splashes of colour, talks expansively about his fifth novel, which has already been widely interpreted as a fable about, variously, immigration, Brexit, Trump, nationalism, refugees and environmental collapse: just about every important issue the world faces right now.
“I was in Hong Kong when [Tony] Blair was elected [prime minister of Britain], oddly enough,” he says, in one throwaway comment.
