We Are Now Beginning Our Descent

by James Meek

Overview

At the dawn of the twenty-first century Adam Kellas finds himself hurled on a journey between continents and cultures. In his quest from the war-torn mountains of Afghanistan to the elegant dinner tables of north London and then the marshlands of the American South, only the memory of the beautiful, elusive Astrid offers the possibility of hope.

With all the explosive drama of The People's Act of Love, this is a spellbinding tale of folly and the pursuit of love from one of today's most talented and visionary writers.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781847671158
Publisher:	Canongate Books
Publication date:	08/23/2022
Edition description:	Main
Pages:	302
Product dimensions:	5.12(w) x 7.80(h) x 0.71(d)

About the Author

James Meek was born in London in 1962 and grew up in Dundee. We Are Now Beginning Our Descent is his fourth novel. His previous books include Drivetime (1995) and The People's Act of Love (2005) which won the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize, the SAC Book of the Year Award, was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and has been translated into more than twenty languages. He has published two collections of short stories, Last Orders (1992) and The Museum of Doubt (2000), which was shortlisted for a Macmillan Silver Pen award.

He has worked as a journalist since 1985. He now lives in London. His reporting from Iraq and about Guant namo Bay won a number of British and international awards. In the autumn of 2001 he reported for the Guardian from Afghanistan on the war against the Taliban and the liberation of Kabul.

Editorial Reviews

We Are Now Beginning our Descent is really a love story, a fine successor to The People's Act of Love.

Spectator

Compelling and admirable . . . Kellas is one of the more intriguing anti-heroes of recent fiction.

Sunday Telegraph - Matt Thorne

A brilliantly constructed contemporary novel, illuminated with wit and intelligence on almost every page.

Daily Mail

Partly a thought-provoking . . . meditation on writing, modern warfare and moral responsibility, it is also a poignant love story.

Sunday Telegraph - Katie Owen

Supremely enjoyable and smartly written, with a scale that attempts not only to understand something about the world and the West's place in it, but something more timeless: men and their trouble understanding love.

Sunday Herald - Colin Waters

James Meek's novel is full of startling vignettes, caustic observations and fine black comedy.

Daily Telegraph - Toby Clements

Meek has created not just an entertaining novel, but a valuable comment on some of the most contentious issues of our time.

Irish Times

Damnably hard to put down, with the momentum and trajectory of a well-aimed rocket. A book to keep one reading through the small hours. Terrific.

London Review of Books - Jonathan Raban

Always readable, the book has pace and assurance. A highly intelligent novel and edgily contemporary.

Independent Whig.

Genuinely affecting.

Sunday Times

A truthful and powerful novel about love, friendship and the struggle to be true in a world that has lost its grip on certainties.

New Statesman

Conscientious and courageous.

Guardian

He skilfully weaves a contemporary take on war, love and the demands of the marketplace on those who seek to be poets, not bards with his characteristic segueing from ont time and place to another, or one perspective to another, that keeps the reader on constant alert.

Herald - Lesley McDowell

Astonishing. A love story that owes everything to the great collision of Osama bin Laden and Bush Jr's foreign policy. An intensely flavoured excavation of our times . . . wholly original.

The Times

Meek's terrific prose batters the notion of non-combatant neutrality with a couple of explosive set pieces . . . a terse, adrenaline-charged plot that punctures a fragile love story with uncomfortable questions about ideals and reality.

Financial Times - James Urquhart