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Imprint: Hogarth
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Published: 20/08/2020
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ISBN: 9781781090787
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Length: 304 Pages
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Dimensions: 223mm x 30mm x 140mm
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Weight: 417g
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RRP: £16.99
'Bangkok is the star of this accomplished novel. Its denizens are aliens to themselves, glittering on the horizon of their own lives, moving - restless and rootless and afraid - though a cityscape that has more stories than they know' HILARY MANTEL
Sarah Talbot Jennings, a young American living in New York, has fled to Bangkok to disappear. Arriving with a suitcase containing $200,000, she rents an apartment at the Kingdom, a glittering high-end complex slowly sinking into its own twilight - and run by conveniently discreet staff.
In Bangkok's simmering heat Sarah meets the beguiling Mali, a half-Thai tenant who's strangely determined to bring the quiet American out of her shell. An invitation to Mali's poker nights soon follows, where - fuelled by shots of yadong, gossip of shady dealings in the city and the hit of marijuana - Sarah is drawn into the orbit of the Kingdom's glamorous ex-pat women.
But when political chaos and a frenzied uprising wrack the streets below, and Sarah witnesses something unspeakable through one of the Kingdom's windows, her safe haven begins to feel like a trap.
From a master of atmosphere and suspense, The Glass Kingdom is a brilliantly unsettling story of cruelty and psychological unrest, and an enthralling glimpse into the shadowy crossroads of karma and human greed.
'Showing Osborne at the height of his powers, The Glass Kingdom upends the Western reader's most basic assumptions about the human world . . . stylish and disquieting' JOHN GRAY, NEW STATESMAN
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Imprint: Hogarth
-
Published: 20/08/2020
-
ISBN: 9781781090787
-
Length: 304 Pages
-
Dimensions: 223mm x 30mm x 140mm
-
Weight: 417g
-
RRP: £16.99
Reviews
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Showing Osborne at the height of his powers, The Glass Kingdom upends the Western reader's most basic assumptions about the human world . . . stylish and disquieting
John Gray, New Statesman
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The author's exceptional descriptive skills fuel an overwhelming sense of menace . . . the next day you will still be thinking of Sarah's fate with horror
Louise Doughty, New York Times
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An atmospheric, gripping novel . . . a horror-satire of globalised capital in which money might buy you idle time or the semblance of power, but it also makes you a target. The Kingdom's residents are blind to its fragility until it is almost too late: as apt a metaphor for 2020 as a novel could hope to provide
Ed Cumming, i
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Bangkok is the star of this accomplished novel. Its denizens are aliens to themselves, glittering on the horizon of their own lives, moving - restless and rootless and afraid - though a cityscape that has more stories than they know
Hilary Mantel
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Bewitching
Geoffrey Wheatcroft, Daily Mail
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Osborne, who specialises in stories about hapless Westerners coming a cropper in foreign lands, has another hit on his hands with this sinister, sensuous and wonderfully evocative tale
Katie Law, Evening Standard
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Osborne handles surface and depth with immense skill, as only great writers can do
Deborah Levy, Financial Times
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Osborne writes mercilessly, savagely well. He excavates his characters . . . with a pathologist's precision
Daily Mail
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If the purpose of a novel is to take you away from the everyday and show you something different, then Osborne is succeeding, and handsomely
Lee Child
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The bastard child of Graham Greene and Patricia Highsmith
Metro
