Following the political chaos in the UK over the past few days, I have had several people tell me that it’s like my 2003 novel Untied Kingdom playing out in reality. There is, for instance, this Facebook comment about the French edition.
Now, I can’t lay claim to any great prophetic powers. Untied Kingdom was, in fact, written as a reaction to the Balkan wars of the mid-1990s. It was very much a case of, “Think it couldn’t happen here? Well, it might, and what if it did?”
Still, it does seem as though the undefined event which precipitates disaster for this country in the novel and leads to its ostracisation by the rest of the world, the so-called Unlucky Gamble, could easily refer to David Cameron’s decision to call a referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU, and perhaps also to Boris Johnson’s decision to spearhead the Leave campaign.
At any rate, the ebook version of the novel is available right now at the knockdown price of 99p. So why not grab yourself a copy?
Hurry, though. This offer, much like our politicians and their promises, won’t las.
I am currently halfway through Untied Kingdom and enjoying it very much – it’s the first book of yours I’ve read and definitely won’t be the last. Exactly the same thought occurred to me over the whole Brexit situation – uncanny. Perhaps more disturbingly, if you were to swap the location from the UK to, say, Syria, I think you have a very accurate description of what life must be like there now for those poor people. So easy to dismiss the plight of so many that we see via our superfast broadband connections from our comfortable armchairs; the location switch in your book brings it home in a very real (if unintentional) way. Besides which, it’s a great book!