Kafka meets The Thick of It in a bitingly funny new political satire from Ian McEwan.

That morning, Jim Sams, clever but by no means profound, woke from uneasy dreams to find himself transformed into a gigantic creature.

Jim Sams has undergone a metamorphosis. In his previous life he was ignored or loathed, but in his new incarnation he is the most powerful man in Britain - and it is his mission to carry out the will of the people. Nothing must get in his way: not the opposition, nor the dissenters within his own party. Not even the rules of parliamentary democracy.

With trademark intelligence, insight and scabrous humour, Ian McEwan pays tribute to Franz Kafka’s most famous work to engage with a world turned on its head.

Listening Length

2 hours and 13 minutes
Author

Ian McEwan
Narrator

Bill Nighy
Audible release date

September 27, 2019
Language

English
Publisher

Penguin Audio
ASIN

B07XVLMX95
Version

Unabridged
Program Type

Audiobook
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Product details

Listening Length	2 hours and 13 minutes
Author	Ian McEwan
Narrator	Bill Nighy
Audible.com Release Date	September 27, 2019
Publisher	Penguin Audio
Program Type	Audiobook
Version	Unabridged
Language	English
ASIN	B07XVLMX95
Best Sellers Rank	#270,141 in Audible Books & Originals (See Top 100 in Audible Books & Originals) #644 in Political Fiction (Audible Books & Originals) #778 in Satirical Literature & Fiction #4,522 in Political Fiction (Books)

Customer reviews

4 out of 5

677 global ratings

5 star		48%
4 star		22%
3 star		19%
2 star		7%
1 star		4%

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Top reviews from the United States

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Art Shapiro

Kafka, inverted

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on May 10, 2020

A brutal but not heavy-handed parody/allegory of Boris Johnson, Donald Trump, and Brexit. The denouement is, er, extremely timely, indeed prescient. This little book may not be fully comprehensible to Americans unversed in British politics and idioms. Not McEwan's best, but quite enjoyable.

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John B. Biggs

forget it

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on July 7, 2020

Verified Purchase

I disliked the first two chapters so much I didn't bother to go further. A pinch from Kafka.

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Top reviews from other countries

postgrad

A feeble Brexit satire

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on October 2, 2019

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A group of cockroaches conspire to take over the bodies of leading members of the present British Conservative government in order to push through ‘Reversalism’ - a crackpot economic theory which is intended to symbolise Brexit and also, to a lesser extent, Marxist socialism. They do so in order to bring about the collapse of British society in order to benefit the cockroach community, to which they return at the end, having succeeded in their mission.

As a short contemporary satire (100 pages in the paperback edition, not 112 as claimed above) this is surprisingly feeble and one dimensional. The characters are little more than puppets, whose identities are easily decoded. Jim Sams, the chief cockroach, owes something to Theresa May but is basically Boris Johnson. Jim’s special adviser Simon is obviously Dominic Cummings. Benedict, the only human in the cabinet, is plainly Philip Hammond. The leader of the opposition, Horace Crabbe, is Jeremy Corbyn. Jane Fish seems to owe something to Jess Phillips MP. And so on. But none of these characters, apart from Jim, have any inner life. They are cardboard cut-outs. Most are propelled by nihilism. As satire the book is a lot less funny than any edition of the magazine Private Eye.

This is a book for the most zealous kind of Remainer. The German chancellor demands to know ‘Why are you doing this? Why, to what end, are you tearing your nation apart?’ The cockroach has no real answer to her penetrating wisdom: ‘Because. That, ultimately, was the only answer: because.’ In the background we hear that the public have changed their mind about the Referendum result and are expressing ‘Anxiety about what they voted for, what they’ve unleashed.’ But in the end the cockroaches win, assisted by Horace Crabbe, leader of the opposition.

McEwan’s sense of irony is astonishingly heavy-handed. Prime Minister Jim Sams, we are told, ‘knew differently. His understanding, like his vision, was narrowed’. Sams is a serial liar: ‘It was important to maintain face’. One does not have to like Boris Johnson to find this kind of satire crude and one dimensional. McEwan cannot resist a joke about Nigel Farage having a milkshake poured over him. This is lazy humour, designed for a certain sort of reader.

In the end the book seems like a howl of despair on McEwan’s part. His vision is a dark one, with Parliament infested by a seething mass of real cockroaches behind its walls and under its floors. But his anger at Brexit seems to have clouded his self-awareness as an artist. To like the politics of this book (anti-Johnson but also anti-Corbyn) you have to share them. There is also the problem that McEwan reduces the great Brexit debate to a single issue, economics. As a satire it is London-centric, set almost entirely in Westminster. The humour will no doubt please some readers but there is something coarse and inhumane at the heart of this story and it is perhaps as reactionary in the end as the right-wing politicians it sets out to mock. It is disturbing that towards the end of the book McEwan portrays ‘a tale of harassment, bullying, obscene taunts and inappropriate touching’ as a concoction cynically invented for the media to destroy a decent man. It’s an odd perspective to represent in fiction at a time when in the real world more and more women are stepping forward to make just such claims against prominent men.

19 people found this helpful

D. Eves

A most enjoyable satire

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on September 27, 2019

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Downloaded before a flight and finished the book before landing. Funny, insightful and a clever satire on a situation so absurd that only BREXIT seems it's equal. The physical clash between the two sides is equally poignant.

16 people found this helpful

Graham G Grant

Orwell meets Kafka in a heavy-handed Brexit satire

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on October 21, 2019

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Deftly crafted, this is a blackly comic allegory with some entertaining moments. In an extended short story, a cockroach hijacks the body of the Prime Minister, Jim Sams, at a time of political crisis (not Brexit, but a deeply contentious economic proposal which has split the nation). Sams sets about ruthlessly driving the plan to fruition in Machievellian style. Perhaps it’s simply too soon to be satirising events that are all too raw and divisive, but this metaphysical fable feels a bit too didactic and heavy-handed. We know McEwan is a Remainer, but perhaps we don’t want his political standpoint to inform his fiction in such an obvious manner. As a McEwan fan, I wanted to enjoy this story more than I did. But there’s much to admire in the way it was crafted, and the cleverness of the conceits, whatever your views. The extent to which you enjoy it may well be dictated by your views on Brexit, but it’s such a speedy read that it’s worth setting aside those misgivings - and joining Jim Sams in his insectile quest for political domination...

3 people found this helpful

Birdnerd

A very witty take on Brexit

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on September 29, 2019

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...which was so delicious that I read it in one sitting. Although Ian McEwan makes a point (as all works of fiction do) that the characters are imagined and that any resemblance is purely coincidental, it’s fairly easy to see who’s who. This little story captures the madness of the current British political situation nicely.

8 people found this helpful

Joe Bathelt

A modicum of comic relief

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on March 28, 2020

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“And in this moment of scheming, he was richly self-aware, fully alive to the joy of politics at its purest, which was the pursuit of ends at all costs.” In this novella, Ian McEwan presents a funny take on the Brexit fiasco that provides some much-needed comic relieve for exasperated Remoaners. Even though the topic has been written about to death, this is a fresh take that brings out the immense absurdity of the political situation. I really enjoyed reading it and felt entertained without being overladen with politics. The story provides a broader narrative that puts things into a more manageable perspective and, thereby, fulfils provides closure. After all, laughter is the best weapon in the face of uncertainty.

2 people found this helpful

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