Adam Thirlwell was born in 1978, and grew up in North London. His first novel, Politics, was published in 2003, and that year he was selected as one of Granta‘s Best of Young British Novelists. A book on the art of the novel, Miss Herbert, was published in 2007, and won a Somerset Maugham Award. His second novel, The Escape, was published in 2009.
A novel called Politics, described in the words of its cover like this: “In case you had not noticed,” writes Adam Thirlwell in his first novel, Politics, “in this book I am not interested in anything so small as the history of the USSR. I am not writing anything so limited.” In this epic miniature, therefore, Politics tells the story of three kids in their twenties falling in love with each other in London. And, simultaneously, it tells other, smaller stories: of Stalin on the phone, Mao in the bathroom, Osip Mandelstam in another bathroom, Adolf Hitler on all fours, and Milan Kundera in an argument. Politics is not (quite) about politics.’
First published by Jonathan Cape in 2003.