2020

Starred review from June 4, 2018
Steven imagines a chillingly plausible near future in which a terrorist attack in the United Kingdom sparks a radical white nationalist backlash. Four young South Asian Muslims detonate a bomb on a sleeper train, killing over 160 people. In the aftermath, incendiary demagogue Eric Semple runs for Parliament in the fictional northern England town of Sudburgh, espousing the views of White Rose, a xenophobic nationalist group. His unexpected victory leads to violence against both Muslims and Brits, and his own kidnapping. Steven views the fracturing of British multiculturalism through a kaleidoscopic collection of witness statements and news reports. These frequently unidentified, poignant voices show confusion, pain, and righteous indignation from many angles, and include one bomber’s mother, government officials, participants in shadowy sharia courts, aggrieved white working-class men, and a range of bystanders. The orderly nature of their accounts suggests depositions at an inquest, implying an eventual return to normalcy, but their words offer no sense of justice or easy answers. Characters rarely recur, though several pieces by a police officer recount his failure to intervene in the torture of a terror suspect, building a haunting picture of guilt and trauma. This complex picture of a fraught political future will leave readers unsettled by its terrifying plausibility.