Ratings4
Average rating3.5
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.
Reviews with the most likes.
I'm ashamed to admit I spent more time than I should have figuring just how Reversalism would work. (Conclusion: It wouldn't.) In the book Reversalism is an economic system supported by the Prime Minister (not quite himself of late) in which the economy would flow backwards. One paid one's employer for hours worked and then received compensation for shopping, the whole system rounded out by penalization for the accumulation of wealth. The origins for this literary device lie in the novella's other literary device, his homage to Kafka:
He was beginning to understand that by a grotesque reversal his vulnerable flesh now lay outside his skeleton...
The Children Act