Imprint
- Abacus
- Little, Brown
- Little, Brown
Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945)
A funny, dark and moving novel about London, the end of the 1970s, and the end of an era, from the masterful author of Curtain Call, Freya and Our Friends in Berlin.
London, Burning is a novel about the end of the 1970s, and the end of an era. It concerns a nation divided against itself, a government trembling on the verge of collapse, a city fearful of what is to come, and a people bitterly suspicious of one another. In other words, it is also a novel about now.
Vicky Tress is a young policewoman on the rise who becomes involved in a corruption imbroglio with CID. Hannah Strode is an ambitious young reporter with a speciality for skewering the rich and powerful. Callum Conlan is a struggling Irish academic and writer who falls in with the wrong people. While Freddie Selves is a hugely successful theatre impresario stuck deep in a personal and political mire of his own making. These four characters, strangers at the start, happen to meet and affect the course of each other's lives profoundly. As the clock ticks down towards a general election old alliances totter and the new broom of capitalist enterprise threatens to sweep all before it. It is funny and dark, violent but also moving.
More books by Anthony Quinn
Praise for London, Burning: 'Richly pleasurable' Observer
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[A] marvellous new novel . . . This master storyteller recreates the whole world of the 70s, as the London we used to know is about to change for ever. The novel throbs with music and life, love and skulduggery, with the beating drum of the approaching Margaret Thatcher sounding the knell for that decade and the way we used to live on these islands - - i newspaper
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It's David Peace territory, but Quinn is a steadier, suaver writer, relying on the old-school charms of rounded characters and a clockwork plot . Richly pleasurable. - observer
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Peopled by the kind of strong, fully realised individuals whom you could easily identify in a crowd, it is skilfully plotted and written with a rare elegance, sinuous wit and even optimism. It is a deeply satisfactory read - Financial Times
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