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Your Life Without Me

James Meek

$34.99

Paperback

Forthcoming
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English
Miscellaneous
09 June 2026
An explosive modern novel from the award-winning writer of The People's Act of Love

Mr Burman is unmoored. Still reckoning with the death of his wife Ada, and struggling to understand his grown-up daughter Leila, he finds himself on a train to London, at the invitation of the police.

He is to meet Raf, a young man suspected of trying to blow up St Paul's cathedral - and a man once intimately connected with the Burman family. Have the police laid a trap?

Compelling and compassionate, this novel follows Mr Burman's journey towards the mystery of a radical act and into the true nature of his own family. It asks what a person leaves behind when they've gone, and how much of the past we can carry with us into the future.

'A novel with telling things to say about consumer culture, architecture, marriage, radicalism and the mistakes parents make . . . The novel is also a potent tale about the unknowability of people and what loved ones leave behind when they are gone.' - Independent, Novel of the Month

'Engrossing and compassionate . . . Meek's fine novel is itself a provocation; tragic, humbling and rejuvenating all at once' - Financial Times
By:  
Imprint:   Miscellaneous
Country of Publication:   United Kingdom
Edition:   Export/Airside - Export/Airside/Ireland
Dimensions:   Height: 220mm,  Width: 141mm,  Spine: 19mm
Weight:   266g
ISBN:   9781837262625
ISBN 10:   1837262624
Pages:   256
Publication Date:  
Audience:   General/trade ,  ELT Advanced
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Forthcoming

James Meek is the author of seven novels including The People's Act of Love which was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and won both the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize and the Scottish Arts Council Award. It has been published in more than thirty countries. Meek has also written two collections of short stories and two books of non-fiction, including Private Island which won the 2015 Orwell Prize. In 2020, To Calais, In Ordinary Time was shortlisted for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction and longlisted for the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction. He is a Contributing Editor to the London Review of Books and writes regularly for the Guardian and New York Times. He lives in London. @meekajam | @jamesmeek.bsky.social

Reviews for Your Life Without Me

James Meek is one of our most consistently brilliant and thought-provoking writers. This is his best novel yet - a dark and unsettling meditation on marriage, fatherhood and architecture. Every page rings with deep truth -- ALEX PRESTON James Meek is a master of the art of the stealthy narrative, and his keen intelligence and alertness are evident on every page of his new novel as he juxtaposes the ordinary, unsolvable tragedy of one family's life against the greater dilemma of our compromised relationship with the modern world. Reading Your Life After Me is like watching a glass slowly turning to reveal a truth that is at once uncomfortable and heart-breaking -- RUPERT THOMSON James Meek's Your Life Without Me follows a retired schoolteacher as he tries to discover whether it was his influence that landed a favourite former pupil in prison for a radical act of destruction. In the process, Mr Burman starts to understand his own dysfunctional family dynamics in a novel that is a profound and unsettling take on modern life by a writer at the top of his game. -- KIRSTY LANG Praise for James Meek: 'A glorious imaginative feat . . . Rarely have I been so captivated by a novel' -- SARAH WATERS on To Calais in Ordinary Time A story so original and so fully imagined -- HILARY MANTEL on To Calais in Ordinary Time Be it essay or article, novel or short story, as a writer and time traveller James Meek does things differently and as readers we are all the better for that * * Sunday Times * * The language is so fresh and crisp and sparkling. And what a narrative! -- PHILIP PULLMAN on The People's Act of Love The best and most original book that I have read for years -- LOUIS DE BERNIERES on The People's Act of Love James Meek is Britain's answer to Don DeLillo * * Independent * *


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