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Ian McEwan does La Cucaracha
A new low in English criticism appeared to have been reached when novels like Middle England, Autumn and A Time of Lies received literary acclaim for the way they caricatured the dull, xenophobic, nostalgia-obsessed, Brexit-voting, provincial masses.[1] Arriving late upon the Brexlit scene, the Booker Prize-winning doyen of modern English letters, Ian McEwan, has nevertheless surpassed them all with his latest novella, an indignant assault upon those who had the temerity to vote Leave and unravel his Eutopian dream. The Cockroach opens with the Prime Minister, Jim Sams, waking to find himself metamorphosed into the eponymous bug. Symbolising the change from “lukewarm” Teresa May to a Johnsonian “die in a ditch” determination, this Kafkaesque transformation galvanises the Prime Minister to implement a bizarre economic policy to fulfil an earlier populist referendum commitment.
The satire assumes that the economic harm Brexit will cause resembles a fantastic scheme to…
Madam: Archbishop Fisher (July-August 2024) does not resist the attacks on his church by the political, social or scientific atheists and those who insist on not being told what to do.
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